Some Place Like Home
by PossumSoul
Summary: (7x06 AU) Instead of sending him home, the artifact is shot out of Castle's hand, breaking the artifact and leaving him trapped in the world where he and Beckett never met. Stuck in a world where nothing is right, Rick is torn between convincing this Kate that they belong together and trying to find a way back to his own. [Castle Fanfication 2019]
1. Chapter 1

**(Entry for Castle Fanfication 2019) C:**

**Summary:**

_Instead of sending him home, the Incan artifact that was his only way home is shot out of his hand, trapping him in the world where he and Beckett have never met. _

* * *

"_Look out!" _He shouts on instinct, the artifact clutched in his hand.

The shots explode from the far side of the plant and in that instant, he accepts his fate. This is what he promised he'd do for her before he even realized he would, put his life in the way of anything that comes for her's. The bullets whiz through the air and the first pierces the artifact in his hand, making it fly behind him and in that split second, he thinks he's safe.

When the next bullet hits him in the chest, he's body goes limp and he falls to the floor, the blood ringing in his ears making the next to gunshots coming from her Glock sound like dull thuds.

After Beckett sees Lark fall to the floor, she moves as quickly as she can to get to him, her movements clumbsy and uncoordinated when her knees hit the floor and her gun clatters onto the concrete next to her. "Mr. Castle," she says, her voice weak and scared as she grabs onto his shoulder. She looks him over, seeing a large hole in his left shoulder and blood pouring out of the wound. "You just saved my life." She puts her hand on his stomach, pulling at the back of his neck with the other just as his scared eyes, that look as if they're trying to push as much pain and fear away as they can for her, look over to her. "Why?"

His brow knits softly, as if she just asked him a very stupid and obvious question. "Because I love you, Kate."

Beckett's heart is cut in two, her pulse exploding inside of her throat. When she sees his eyes drift away from her and his hands start to weaken and fall back, she does the only thing she can. "No, please don't go. Stay with me." She pleads, keeping her voice as steady as she can, swallowing back the tremble.

It's not working. His eyes just closed. She's losing him.

"Stay with me, Castle." She pleads again, her thumb reaching up and petting a soft line along his jaw line as his head falls away. "Castle?" She tries again desperately. "No," she starts as a hot, angry fire ignites in her system. She moves closer to him, leaning over him and mashing her hands into the gaping bullet hole in his shoulder. "You're not leaving me."

The blood feels warm as it gushes against her palm and seaps through her fingers.

"You're not going, you understand?" She demands and fumbles in her inside pocket for her cell phone, speed dialing dispatch. She cuts the operator off once the sound of her voice comes over the line. "This is Captain Beckett, Twefth Precinct. I need emergency medical transport at the abandoned coal plant on Hudson, _now!" _

She tosses the phone to the floor and presses her hands back into his wound. Her teeth clench as she looks up to his closed eyes again. "You're staying with me, Castle."

* * *

"Blood pressure's dropping, we need to move." One of the nurses calls out as he's wheeled down the corridor, several other's crowded around him.

Beckett jogs close behind them, listening to every word with her eyes trained on his face.

"Pulse is weak, heart rate is dropping. We're losing him." Another nurse says too calmly from the other side of his gurney.

"No!" Beckett calls and jumps between the nurses, "no, you can't lose him! You-"

"Ma'am!" The nurse next to her shouts, snatching at her wrists when she lunges for him.

"It's _Captain!"_ Beckett spits in the nurses face angrily.

The nurse slowly blinks her eyes and pushes her back as Castle is wheel down the hall. "Captain, you need to let us work, okay? We'll do everything we can for him, but you have to let us work."

Beckett's heart feels squeezed in her chest as the nurse looks up at her. Her body wants to shove her off, wants to go after him, be near him, plead with him until he comes back. But her rational mind knows her place. Besides, she'll do no good putting up a fight now. She only met him yesterday. She needs to come back to the real world here. She's getting sucked in. By what... she can't tell.

She pushes out a hard breath and pushes her hair back before looking back down to the nurse. "I want an update on him the minute you have anything."

All she's answered with is a careful nod before the nurse takes off back down the hall and through a set of swinging doors, disappearing out of sight.

Beckett lets out another breath, trying her best to fight the shake her lungs are making as she turns around to pace away from the doors, one hand on her forehead and the other on the back of her waist. As she paces slowly back down the hall, things quickly start to become overwhelming, everything closing in and surrounding her. She barely knows who he is. She knows nothing about that man. She can't even consider them friends, by any logical sense of the word.

But the fact he just stepped in front of a bullet for her, without a single ounce of hesitation, forces her to stop in her tracks and lean back against the wall, doubling over and leaning down against her knees as her own breath starts to choke her. She tries with a valliant effort to ease her breathing, drawing it in with a quick huff but letting it out with a slow hiss, letting her eyes drift shut against the burn. She can't cry now. She hasn't cried over anything in... years, at least. She hasn't been this emotional about hardly anything for even longer than that.

She's usually so much better at letting things like this bounce off. She's had civilians injured on her watch before. She's had fellow officers hurt or even killed before. It's part of the job. She's usually better at knowing that.

Why him?

The sound of footsteps rounding the corner of the hallway next to her brings her back to reality for a second. "Captain?" Detective Esposito asks calmy.

Beckett draws in another long breath and pushes herself up right, rolling her shoulders back and straightening her spine. She opens her stinging eyes to see her detectives standing in front of her, simply looking curious as to what's going on.

"We got word of the incident at some coal plant over on Hudson, Captain." Ryan starts casually.

She takes in another hard breath to try and steal herself, not trusting her words to remain steady as she begins to explain. "Castle was shot."

The two detectives look between each other curiously before Esposito starts for the two of them. "You mean that guy who's been hanging around?"

After she gives them a silent nod, looking back down to the floor, Ryan starts up again. "What was going on? I thought we closed the case already. The DA's already got a plea deal ready."

Beckett shoves off the wall, puts another hand on the back of her waist and paces away from them. "Well, we were wrong." She tells them as she paces to the other side of the hallway. "I had a feeling there was more to it so I went back to the only place I could think of," she turns around, feeling a tight pull in her chest at the sight of them looking at her like this is just another day on the job for them, "and found Mr. Castle being held at gunpoint."

Both the detective's brow shoot up in surprise. "Whoa," Ryan says and turns briefly to his partner. "That guy doesn't really seem the type to be wrapped up in the criminal underworld."

Espo turns to Ryan, knocking him in the arm with the back of his hand, "Doesn't exactly seem the type to keep his underwear clean during a fire fight either." He says on a chuckle.

"Detective Esposito!" Beckett scolds in a commanding voice, cutting through their laughing with the fury surging inside of her. Both of the detectives freeze, eyes wide and grins wiped clean off their faces. "A man was just shot protecting me. This is _hardly _time for jokes of any kind." She angrily scolds him, slowly pacing her way toward him. "And if I sense that you or your partner cannot take your duty seriously, we can see how seriously you take traffic detail. Do you understand?"

"Boss," Ryan starts in a voice barely above a scared whisper as she stands in front of Esposito, "Esposito didn't mean anything by it."

"I'm sorry, Captain, but-" Espo says and gives her a shrug, "we don't even know the guy."

Beckett takes in another breath to continue lecturing him, but sees a pair of faces come down the hall over Esposito's shoulder, an older red-headed woman and a much younger woman with jet black hair, both looking terrified and worried. "His family is here," she says to them. "Ryan?" She says while she catches eyes with the young girl from the far end of the hallway.

"Sir?"

Beckett looks over to him, "You and Detective Esposito go to the coal plant and start processing the scene. I want to know what happened and why."

"You got it, Captain," Ryan obeys with a nod and looks down to the floor.

"Sir?" She hears Esposito call as she catches the girl's eyes again while she jogs down the hall toward her. "You just gonna wait here?"

"Yes," She tells him sternly and steps around him to meet the family.

"Sir, with all due respect," Esposito tries again, "I don't think you should let this guy get to-"

"_You don't get it, Esposito!" _She yells at him, shoving a sharp finger into his chest, tears finally showing their tracks running down her face. "I just had a complete stranger step in front of a bullet for me without a _single _shred of hesitation or regret." She struggles, her voice shaking. "I'm not leaving until I know why, now do I need to remind you of your orders or can I expect you to follow them?"

The two detectives look to her with arks in their brows before looking between each other and silently moving passed her and out of sight. Once they're gone, she lets her shaky breath go and gathers herself, feeling the presense of his family behind her. She turns hesitantly, brushing a pair of sweaty palms down her thighs as she looks anywhere but into the eyes of the two scared women in front of her.

"Are you the family of Richard Castle?" She asks, not looking either of them in the eye.

"He's my son, what-"

"What happened to my dad?!" The girl demands, angrily charging toward Beckett but stopping with in a few feet. Beckett looks over to the girl and feels the strength drain from her, a dull headache making itself known as it vices her brain.

"Okay, I'm..." she trails off and pulls her badge off her belt, "I'm Captain Kate Beckett of the NYPD." She tells them and lets her badge fall down to her side. "Your father was shot this afternoon." Beckett says as calmly as she can.

"Shot?"

"He was shot?"

"What on Earth was he doing?"

"Is he alive?"

"Have they said anything?"

"What happened?"

They ask over each other, one right after the other. Beckett lifts her hands up to slow them down. "Okay, okay, listen!" She urges them, reaching over and putting a hand on the girl's arm. "He was shot in the shoulder and they just wheeled him into surgery. I've instructed them to update me the minute they have anything." She explains, looking between the two.

"Ugh..." The elder sighs impateinly and waves her hand in the air as she spins around. "What drunken escapade did he go on this time that could have possessed him to get anywhere near something like this? How immature and stupid could he have-"

"No, no, listen." She says, stepping passed the girl and up to his mother, getting her attention. "What your son did wasn't anything like that, okay?"

"Well then, what on Earth was it?" The elder demands.

Beckett lets out another hard breath and feels her lungs squeeze tightly. "He was shot stepping in front of a bullet that was meant for me."

As her heart is choked by a snake coiling itself around her with every heartbeat, she sees the girl step in front of her with a knit in her brow and red-rimmed eyes. "What?"

"Why would he do that?" His mother asks with a shake in her voice.

She decides not to give them a dead end and instead decides to start investigating. "Has uh..." she starts and brushes her hair back, putting a hand on her waist, "has he been acting strangely? Has he said or done anything that might indicate his behavior was off at all? That something might have been wrong?"

"Well, he has been jabbering on and on lately about some artifact and another world or some other nonsense."

"No!" The girl snaps at her grandmother. "No, he was better, okay?!" She argues with her in a shaking voice.

It's then that she gets a very cold, sickening thought in her mind that can't and won't leave until she has answers. It would explain a lot. His going on and on about being from some other world, his constant thinking he's supposed to be somewhere else, his supposed rambeling about some artifact, his sudden shift in and out of behavior... his telling a complete stranger he loves her...

"Listen, Miss..." she tries, eyeing the elder for her name.

"Martha."

"I'm Alexis."

She gives them a soft smile briefly, feeling her headache surge around her brain again. "Martha... Alexis..." she says as she looks between the two, "I... hate to have to suggest this, but... does your family have any history of mental illness?"

"My dad is _not _crazy!" Alexis fights her.

"Alexis, darling!" Martha pulls her back as Alexis tries to fight out of her grasp. Martha looks back up to Beckett with a sadness in her eyes. "No, Captain. My son may be crazy at times, even insane maybe, but one thing he is not is certifiable."

"Okay, that's..." she trails off, lifting her hands up to try and slow them down, "that's all I needed to know. Now," she says on a shaky sigh, "I've instructed my detectives to go to the scene where he was shot to try and find out what they were after from him." She reaches into her inside pocket again and pulls out one of her cards. "Here is my card if you ever need to call me."

Martha takes the card, handing it to Alexis.

"I just need to go take care of a few things down at the precinct and I'll try and be back as soon as I can."

"We'll call you if there are any updates, Captain." Martha says, pulling at her granddaughter's shoulder.

"If you don't mind, I'd also like to assign an officer here to look after you and Mr. Castle."

The two of them nod silently as Alexis turns herself into the grasp of her grandmother. Knowing where her place is, Beckett turns away from the two of them and strides quickly down the hall, feeling her migraine tighten around her head again. Once she's around the corner, she lifts her hand up, pinching her forehead in a sigh of pain. She moves through the front door, passed the ambulances and toward the sidewalk, while pulling out her cellphone to call for an officer to the hospital to look after his family.

With the precinct only a few blocks away, she decides to hoof it and starts down the sidewalk, the dull pain of her headache encircling her head. With the first block down, she catches sight of the drug store across the street. This headache is going to be killing her if she decides to live with it. She hasn't had a migraine this bad since her last budget battle with the mayor.

She jogs quickly across the street and glides through the doors as they slide open, hearing the soft lull of the music in the background. She's never heard the song before, maybe in passing on the radio a time or two. But she pays it no mind as her headache just buldged around her brain again, more intense than it has before. "Ah..." she sighs and grasps her forehead.

_"Nothing goes as planned..." _The lyrics start in a soft, raspy melody.

She shakes her head and quickly finds a bottle of Aleve near the first aisle. She grabs it quickly and moves to the register, setting it down with a rattle. "Will that be..." the cashier trails her words off and Beckett looks up to see a familiar looking redhead, hair tied back in a pony tail, looking over the counter at her with wide eyes.

"Is there something wrong?"

"De... Detective Beckett?" The cashier asks her, her brow knitting.

"Captain, do... do I know you?" She answers back as the music in the background swells.

"Penny? Penny Marchand?" She tries. "You investigated the death of my grandmother."

"Oh... right, the uh... the psychic medium, right?" Penny nods, her eyes still wide. "Um... how are you doing?" She asks, forcing her trying to be friendly.

"I-I'm fine, is... is that all?" Penny asks her as she rings up the pills. With a nod, Beckett sets down a twenty dollar bill, collects her change and grabs for the bottle. "Nice seeing you again, De... I mean Captain Beckett."

She smiles, "You too, Penny." She says as she moves for the doors, twisting open the cap and shaking out two pills. She throws them down her throat and swallows, the headache dulling a bit as she exits the drug store and the doors close behind her, out of the sound of the music and into the noise of the city.

* * *

_A/N: I've had this in my head a while. Let me know what you think. :)_


	2. Chapter 2

The captain draws in a long breath over her folded hands and lets it out in a long, tired sigh. Resting her mouth against her knuckles is the only thing keeping her head off the surface of her paper-laden desk. She's exhausted. The coffee from the breakroom is only serving as a brief, albeit effective slap in the face. She finished the last of the pot an hour ago and now she doesn't have the energy left to climb out of her chair and start another pot, knowing that once she sits back down to wait for it to brew, she'll be too tired to get up again.

She might close her eyes for a moment, but she won't fall asleep. At first, it was out of pride, mixed with obligation to wait up in the night for a word. Now, it's out of scared confusion.

Her eyes rove over the large expanse of her desk, papers and case files strewn about haphazardly and sitting in front of her is her copy of Storm Season, the back cover facing up to have his picture smile back at her. She's out of tears at this point and her emotional reserves are already drained, stealed over to fill back up. Her heart is cocooned up, healing itself at the price of her not feeling anything but empty. There's maybe a hint of shame left, a touch of guilt somewhere.

Her seven-year-old daily planner is opened up and sitting on the corner of her desk and just below it, the case file from the Alison Tisdale murder case, opened and the pictures of the bodies facing her. Scattered across the rest of her desk are papers and reports from other cases, cases that she, until now, felt good about. She just can't stop thinking about what he said.

"_My Kate Beckett would never compromise." _

She unfolds her hands and reaches down to her necklace, clutching the ring tightly in her hands, her eyes too raw already to feel any burn or form any tears. If she was wrong about this case and there was more to it like he said, if all she needed to do was just push a little bit harder, if all she needed to do was just not take the first route to closing the case, how many other killers has she let go free?

She's been questioning if she's cut out for this job ever since Montgomery retired and told her she was up for a promotion. She felt good about it when Gates actually gave her that promotion and then gave her the Captain's chair not too long after taking over. A part of her misses Captain Gates. They got along really well. Both of them strong-willed career women, life long cops, nothing else in their lives to stand in the way of them dedicating themselves to the effort.

But maybe she was wrong.

Her knuckles turn white as she clutches her mother's ring even tighter when her eyes look down to his picture and the image of him on the floor flashes in her mind. Her throat tightens but it doesn't go further than that.

A soft knock clicks at the door jam. Beckett looks up and drops the ring from her hand and pulls at the front of her shirt to let it fall to her chest and calls out. "Come in."

Her door, slightly ajar already, is pushed open and an eight-month pregnant Lanie walks in. "You left a message to see me?"

She blinks tiredly and folds her hands in front of her again, leaning on them to keep herself upright. "Close the door." She orders in a tired voice.

Lanie waddles her way in and closes the door behind her, the blinds rattling against the window of the door to her office sending a deep pang of annoyance into her system. It seems the only real emotion she has the energy to feel is anger, ready, willing, and very able to snap at the first and littlest thing to set her off. "Word's all over the precinct." Lanie says and eases her way down into the chair across from her. She sees Lanie take a moment to look over her desk before she finally takes a look at the captain. "Beckett, you look exhausted."

"I never went home." She says against her hands and looks back down to her desk. "I just had a complete stranger jump in front of a bullet for me, Lanie." She continues when she feels her headache start to come back. On a whim, she pulls open the top drawer of her desk and takes the bottle of Aleve, quickly shaking out two more pills. "Besides, it wouldn't be the first pointless all-nighter I've put myself through in this office."

Lanie's brow pushes together. "You feeling okay?"

Beckett holds the pills in her palm and answers, "Yeah," she says and throws the pills down her throat, "I just have a headache." She finishes after swallowing.

"Did you ever hear back from the hospital?" Lanie asks and folds her hands on top of her stomach.

Beckett nods, "They called me last night and said he's out of surgery. He took a pretty bad hit to the shoulder and they had trouble getting the bullet out without knicking an artery or causing any serious nerve damage. He's stable now though, so they're just waiting for him to come out of it now."

"You don't sound too thrilled about it." She answers back plainly. "Did something happen that the rumor mill didn't tell me about?"

Beckett just gazes tiredly over her hands across her desk at her. "Lanie, I've known him for one day." She begins, unfolding her hands and letting them fall to the surface of her desk. "You didn't see him whenever he took that bullet. It's like..." she trails off, throwing herself back into her chair, "it's like he was just glad that I was safe." She says on a shrug. "I've never had... _anyone.._. be willing to give that much up for me. And he did it all without a single shred of hesitation."

"Beckett, what's really going on here? Who is this guy?"

She takes in a quick breath and leans forward, grabbing the Tisdale case file and handing out over across her desk. "Alison Tisdale, found dead on the night of March 9th, 2009. She had sunflowers over her eyes and rose pedals over her body."

Lanie studies the pictures, vaguely remembering the case. "I sort of remember this one."

"Two days ago," Beckett starts again, pulling herself up to her desk, "Richard Castle came into my precinct claiming that he'd worked that case with me seven years ago."

Lanie flips over the picture to read the case file. "Says here the lead on the case was McNulty."

Beckett draws in another breath and reaches for her old planner. "I did some digging through some old stuff of mine," she says and takes up her planner, "and found this." She hands Lanie the planner, March 9th circled in red marker, and gives her a moment to read it. "I remember that night, Lanie. I was off duty and had a date that night. I was sitting in the cafe waiting for him to get there when I started to think he wasn't coming. I remember because I had my phone in my hand and I was _just _about to speed dial dispatch to tell them I was picking up another shift when he showed up."

"Which," Lanie starts, handing her planner back to her, "would have put you on call the night of the murder."

"And I would have met him then... just like he said." She finishes for her in a tired, raspy voice.

Lanie looks down to the case file for another moment before looking back up, "Whatever happened with the date?"

Beckett rolls her eyes deeply and tosses herself back into her office chair, reaching up and pressing her palms into her aching forehead. "He was an online vegan blogger slash professional dog-walker who didn't know I was a cop. What do you think happened?"

Lanie chuckles to herself and flips the file closed. "What's with you always striking out, girl?"

With her hands still at her face, her head craned back to lean against the headrest, Beckett answers her through her palms. "Not in the mood for insults right now, Lanie."

"What about that hot doctor you dated some years back? Why'd you ever break up with him?"

"We never broke up exactly." Beckett explains, letting her hands fall down to her armrests. "We dated for a few months before he went back to Haiti and by the time he was due back, I'd made lieutenant under Gates and was studying for the Captain's exam."

"Well, what about this guy?" Lanie tries again, reaching forward awkwardly over her pregnant stomach to grab the book sitting in front of her. "He's clearly into you enough to take a bullet and..." Lanie's eyes lid and a hazy smile appears on her face, "Whew, girl, he is fine." She says and tosses the book back down to her desk.

"And out of his mind." Beckett continues, grabs the paperback and sets it clear on the other side of her desk, face up. "And even if he wasn't convinced that we'd worked the Tisdale case together and wasn't delusional as to actually assume he knows anything about me at all, I have too much going on. The DA seems reluctant to pull out of the plea bargain and go for full charges now that we have evidence on Lark. The mayor is talking about _another_ budget cut unless our case closure rate sees an increase. And I just had a man that I've known all of a day take a bullet for me without a _single _ounce of hesitation because he says that he loves me. So, forgive me if a relationship isn't exactly on my list."

As Beckett is pulling herself up to her desk again and is starting to gather up the case files strewn about her desk, Lanie is vigorously shaking her head and rubbing her pinky finger in her ear. "I'm sorry, he said what?"

Beckett locks eyes on a paper in her hands, only raising her brow as she moves it across her desk. "He said he loves me. You want any more proof he's out of his mind?"

"Wait," Lanie starts quickly as she pushes herself to the side against the arm of her chair, "why would he-"

"I don't know, Lanie." Beckett stops her, looking her in the eye as the cacoon around her heart starts to thin. "I don't know who he is, or who he thinks I am to him, but whatever this delusion of his, it's real enough to him for him to put his life on the line for me. And at the very least," she says, trying to harden herself as much as she can as the memory of him standing just outside the door to her office, telling her that his Kate Beckett, the Kate Beckett she grew up knowing herself as, would never compromise when it comes to justice, "I owe it to him not to compromise on this."

Without another word, Beckett stands up on weak legs and turns to move out around her desk. "Where are you going?" Lanie asks.

"I'm going to find out just who it is he thinks I am to him."

* * *

After a tired walk to the hospital, stopping briefly at the vending machine in the lobby to pick herself up another quick caffeinated slap in the face, she soon makes her way into the lobby and approaches the reception desk, grabbing for her badge with the hand not occupied by her bitter, tasteless black coffee. She flashes her badge to the nurse behind the counter and the nurse looks up with a bit of a stunned, blank stare.

"Captain Kate Beckett, I'm looking for Richard Castle's room." She says sternly, forcing it out over the exhaustion as she tucks her badge back into her pocket.

The nurse looks up to her again after a brief glance downward, then lifts her arm up and points down the hall with a pen. "Down the hall, hang a right, room one oh seven."

Beckett nods, looking down to the counter before deciding to ask more questions, whether to stall her seeing him again or to help him, she isn't sure. "I stationed an officer with his family. Would you happen to know if he's still here?"

The nurse looks up again, seeming surprised that she's still lingering. "I believe he is, yes."

Beckett nods seriously, seeming to actually care about her response. "And the family?" She asks, gaining the nurse's eyes back. "Are they still here?"

"I can't be sure, Ma'am. I just started my shift." The nurse replies, looking back down to her paperwork.

"What about uh..." Beckett continues to stall, earning herself another somewhat annoyed look from the nurse, "his condition. Is he still stable? Has there been any complications?"

"I'm sorry, Ma'am, but I-"

"I know," Beckett stops her, starting to berate herself internally for even asking, "doctor-patient, I get it."

The nurse nods at the Captain again before taking up a clipboard. "Just uh..." she trails off before stepping out from around the reception desk, "just take your time."

Deeply annoyed at the pity, Beckett grits her teeth and waits until the nurse disappears down the hall to lift her cup to her lips again, take a small, unsatisfying sip that makes her headache swell again when she swallows, and starts down the hall she was pointed toward in long strides. As she rounds the corner and starts to count the door numbers as she passes them, she clutches her badge inside of her pocket tightly, her heart starting to rise up into her throat, feeling like it wants to choke her.

She sees a uniform standing against the wall to the right side of the hallway with his thumbs hanging from his belt. She approaches him, immediately catching his attention as his back straightens like a rod. Beckett gives him a single nod. "You're dismissed, Officer. I've got it from here."

The officer raises a brow at her. "You sure, Sir?"

With another deep pang of annoyance, she swallows as much of is as she can to stifle the boom her voice wants to let out. "It may have been a while, Officer, but I was still a beat cop once, same as you. I've got it from here."

She waits until the officer silently complies with his captain's orders and rounds the corner to grab the doorknob and push the door open. Despite her aching head, the instant she sees him again lying asleep in the hospital bed to the left side of the room, her heart clenches painfully in her chest and her stomach feels as if it's being pulled in on itself. An automatic reaction that she wasn't prepared for and can't shake away. The only thing keeping her standing is her holding onto the doorknob.

The sight of him hurt like this just... pains her.

"Captain Beckett?" A soft, airy voice says next to her.

Beckett is jolted out of her momentary spiral and looks to her left, seeing the girl from yesterday with jet black hair, now noticing it looks dyed instead of her natural hair color, standing up from one of the chairs against the wall in a pair of loose black yoga pants, black skate shoes, and a long sleeved t-shirt with a grey chest and black sleeves. "Alexis."

The girl nods, giving the captain a soft smile. "I didn't think you'd come."

"I-I uh..." she struggles for a neutral answer as she turns to look at him again, "I just wanted to see how he's doing. Has he woken up yet?" She asks, turning back to the girl.

Alexis shakes her head and looks to her father. "No... but they said he was going to be okay. I should be able to get him home this afternoon."

Beckett gives the girl an encouraging smile, having to force it as it seems heavy on her features. "That's good."

"Could you..." Alexis trails off, crossing her arms nervously as she turns back to Beckett. "Could you maybe sit with him for a while?"

The request makes Beckett's heart skip a beat. Whoever this man is, whoever he thinks she is, whatever he's going through, she still isn't sure how much of a fight she's going to have to put up.

"I need to call my boss in L.A. and tell him I'm staying longer than I thought. I don't think my dad should be left alone right now."

Reluctantly, she gives Alexis a nod and she quickly digs her phone out of her pocket, brushes a long strand of hair behind her ear and makes for the door, shutting it behind her. And now, left alone with him, her stomach knots uncomfortably. She takes a moment before her feet carry her over to his bedside. The sight of his shoulder wrapped in bandages and his arm held up in a sling against his stomach... the only way she can describe it is it breaks her heart.

The pale blue hospital gown is hanging low on his neck and she can see the clear outline of his chest and her head slowly starts to list. Something about the sight of him like this... it feels like an invitation to just curl up and go to sleep. After another long moment, she shakes her head looks down to his arm laying at his side. Her hand tingles, wanting to reach down to him, but she denies it by stuffing her hand back into the pocket of her coat and clutching her badge again.

"Mmm..." he moans softly, rusting the sheets as he stirs in bed.

Beckett looks up, her system frozen at his movement. "Mr. Castle?" She forces out.

Castle nods lethargically off to one side, leaning his head toward her before he slowly peels his eyes open. She quickly locks eyes with him and it's only a moment before a sleepy smile starts to spread across his face. "Am I back?"

Her throat closes shut at that, not having any clue how to respond. She swallows thickly passed her own heart and stiffens herself, rolling her shoulders back. "I should probably get the nurse." She says and starts to turn.

She stops when she feels his warm hand find her's just as she pulls it from her pocket. Everything locks at his contact and her headache swells painfully again. "Mmm, don't go, Beckett. I just..." he trails off, letting the words fall as she feels him pinch her ring finger with his thumb and forefinger. Unable to shake off his contact, she watches, frozen, as his fingers rub against her ring finger and his eyes quickly look down to her hand.

His sleepy smile and hazy features fall into a sad pain, as if his whole world has just been robbed of him. All she can do is watch as he looks up to her, looking frightened with his blue eyes looking up at her and his hand still holding hers. "No..."

"Castle," she starts calmly and moves her hand to softly clasp his.

He blinks his eyes hard, and she feels her stomach fold again as she sees them turn red. "No," he mutters again and shakes his head in a wide motion, ending it by looking in the opposite direction as her. "No, it didn't work."

"Castle, look at me!" She says emotionally, her hand ripping itself out of his grasp and reach up to his jaw, turning his face to look at her. When their eyes lock again, she stiffens and takes her hand off his face like a hot coal. "Just..." she starts, taking her hand back, "slow down... I'll go find a nurse, okay?"

She holds his gaze until she gets an answer as he looks away from her and down to the sheets. She quickly lets out a breath, turns, and makes her way out the door, shutting it behind her.

Castle grits his teeth, gnashing and grinding in boiling anger and painful sorrow as tears burn in the back of his eyes. He balls up his fists, wrenching the bedsheets, and sends it down into the metal railing of his hospital bed. "I'm so sorry, Kate." He mutters in a choked voice to the ceiling, picturing the woman he loves, the love of his life, somewhere in his own world looking for him... thinking he abandoned her again.

Closing his throat, he squeezes his eyes shut.

"I'm so sorry."

* * *

_A/N: Glad to see the response I got. Time to pick it up a bit, seeing what Beckett's been up to before the real fun begins. :)_


	3. Chapter 3

Castle's heart is a shriveled up prune by the time the nurse and doctor are finished poking and prodding him. Alexis is being a fly on the wall, looking at him with a certain type of pity that he's sure this world's version of himself must get a lot. He isn't used to his own daughter looking at him like that, avoiding him. He's always been very proud and even more happy that him and his daughter stay as close as they have throughout her teenage years.

"Alright, Mr. Castle," the doctor says in her competent voice as she flips the notes over on her clipboard at his bedside, next to the nurse who is checking the readings on the monitor one last time, "you're going to be fine, all things considered. No nerve damage, reflexes seem fine, blood pressure seems normal. I'll make an appointment for a checkup next Wednesday, if that works for you."

Castle doesn't hear her and keeps looking down to his lap, looking at his left hand hanging out of the sling. If he hadn't abandoned her the first time, there would have been a wedding band on this finger by now. If he hadn't made her question his undying commitment to them, made her doubt the kind of man he became for her, none of this would be happening.

"Mr. Castle?" The doctor asks in a firm voice.

"Hmm?" He sounds and looks up, not hearing a word she'd just said. "Yeah, that's fine." He says neutrally, wanting to get it over with.

The doctor scrawls out a note on her clipboard. "I'll just write you a prescription for any pain you may have, but I can only give you one refill, so be careful."

"Sure," he moans and looks back down to his lap.

"I'll get your release forms and be right back." The doctor says, clicking the back of her pen. "The police captain said she wanted a word with you."

Castle's shriveled up heart tightens at that. He doesn't know if he should try with her. He has no clue how that artifact works. If he did, he'd be home right now with the woman he loves. Did it send him to an alternate timeline, switching himself and this world's Rick Castle around? Or did the artifact somehow just reset this timeline?

One or the other, there's a look in Beckett's eye that isn't there. That's not his Kate.

The doctor makes for the door, putting a hand on his daughter's shoulder as she passes her while Alexis keeps pacing back and forth near the door with her arms crossed. Castle looks up after following the doctor with his eyes and catches his daughter's gaze. He gives her a soft smile, telling her that he's still here and he's still his normal self. Alexis smiles back just as softly, enough to make her eyes tighten just as his does when he smiles.

The door is left open and he sees Beckett quickly poke he head in, catching the knob as she leans in. He catches her gaze and they lock eyes. A familiar feeling takes hold of him, like the world is falling away before she seems to catch herself and look down to the floor, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear and stepping through the door.

_Remember, _he tells himself as his eyes rove over her beautiful, slender figure, _this isn't your Kate. _

Beckett paces her way toward his bedside and clasps her hands together in front of her as she looks up to him. _She's exhausted, _he thinks to himself as he catches sight of her features. "I suppose I owe you a thank you."

Castle chuckles to himself softly and looks away from her with a smile. "That or a lecture about getting involved in police business." He semi-jokes with her as he looks back to her with a gentle smirk. "To be honest, I half expected to wake up handcuffed to the railing." He says, waving his wrist in the air.

"Mr. Castle, you just took a bullet for me. Could you at least be a little more serious?" She tells him with a stern voice and a serious expression.

"Sure," he says with a casual shrug of one side of his shoulders, "but then I'd have to hold it over you."

"You saved my life, Castle." She tells him, deflating her straightened posture and looking down at him with an arch in her brow, breaking her stone-faced expression. Castle's heart skips a beat slightly at her use of the informal with him. "I've-" she starts in a tight, nervous voice and cranes her neck, "never had anyone willing to do that for me."

He doesn't know if he's supposed to be overjoyed or heartbroken that in this world, she never met anyone special.

"So," she starts again, reclasping her hands in front of her and looking back up to him, "how can I repay you?"

Castle looks over her again, his heart tugging. "Well," he starts, nodding his head to the side, "there is one thing I could use from you." He says, purposefully putting some husk into his voice to tease her.

He can see the moment when she stiffens like a board. "U-umm... okay."

Castle smirks at her, curving his brow charmingly. "You're not going to like it."

Beckett's shoulders fall again as she lets out a deep sigh. "Why couldn't you have just let me take the hit?"

"You're going to fight me on it, tooth and nail." He continues to tease her.

"Would you just tell me what it is you want?" She demands, waving her arms out.

Castle softens his features into a gentle smile and a soft, caring gaze. "You could go home and get some rest."

Beckett feels her annoyed heart seize up, her breath robbed from her as she catches sight of his soft... caring blue eyes. The way he's looking at her... not out of lust or primal want... but like he genuinely cares about her. "No, Mr. Castle, I-"

"You're tired, Beckett." He stops her in a stern, soft voice. She stops at the tone he's using, her heart pulled. "I know the look of someone who just spent a night at their desk." He tells her, very familiar with the self-destructive work ethic of the woman he loves, in this world or any other. "I'm sure the precinct can last one day shift without their fearless leader."

She fights a smile with more effort that she's had to in a long time as she sees his smile grow out of the corner of her eye as she looks down to the floor. "I appreciate the concern, Mr. Castle. But I'm not really allowed to play hooky."

"What fun is being the boss if you can't break your own rules?" He jokingly asks her, trying to disengage her clearly well-trained defenses. He watches as she clenches her jaw and fights her smile, just as she did at the start of their partnership, and looks away from him, shifting her weight. "Come on, the mark of any decent leader is knowing how to delegate responsibilities. I'm sure your lead detective can handle things for one day. So, please," he starts, pausing to try and get her attention fully before putting a more sincerity into his voice. When she looks over to him again, seeming hesitant to accept, but willing, he starts again. "Go home, maybe get something out of that styrofoam temple I'm sure you have in your fridge and get some rest."

Beckett nods to herself and wrings her hands together for a moment.

"Come on, there's even an all-day marathon of an old show you might be interested in on today." He says, hoping the TV schedule is the same across worlds.

She stops, looking up to him with a pinch in her brow. "What's that?" She asks, curious to see if they're thinking of the same show.

Castle fights a smile of his own and looks down to his lap. "Just some old show that someone special got me to turn around on." He shrugs his uninjured shoulder. "I had planned on surprising her and getting her to play hooky herself today so we could stay in but uh..." he says with a heavy heart, having the scene all played out in his head, "plans sort of fell through."

"What show, Castle?" She asks on a soft chuckle.

Castle looks up to her, "Just some old sci-fi show called Nebula Nine."

He can see the moment an amazed smile lights up her features and when he looks up to catch a glimpse of it, he feels his heart swell. He can see the bright gleam in her eye... the remnants of the woman he loves, of his Kate. "You're a fan of Nebula Nine?"

"Well," he starts again, "I was skeptical at first, but... I've turned around on it." He says as he looks into her eyes. "Go home and get some rest, okay?"

Beckett starts fighting her smile again, her heart fluttering wildly in her chest as she gives him a nod. "If you ever need me, Mr. Castle, you know how to reach me."

"Your number still 911?" He jokes with her again as she turns to make for the door.

She lets a smile sneak passed her defenses for a moment before she looks down to the floor, lifts her hand to give him a small wave goodbye, and makes for the door. After disappearing behind the door, Castle rechecks himself and looks back over to his daughter, who's pretending she's not in the room. "Hey," he calls for her in a happy tone. Alexis looks over to him, "Come over here for a sec."

Alexis seems hesitant to make for his bedside, but after a moment, she steps over and leans against the railing of his bed. "I canceled my flight back to L.A."

He feels his system unclench, knowing whatever this version of him did to drive her away, at the core of their relationship, he's still her father. "Looks like we're both sticking around here for a while then."

"Dad..." Alexis sighs deeply and cranes her neck, shaking her head.

"Alexis," he starts seriously, reaching up and putting his hand over her's, "I _know _this is going to sound insane, and believe me, I would much rather be able just say I'm going crazy and call it a day, but I need someone in this world to believe me, okay?"

"Dad," Alexis says and looks up to him with a worried glimmer in her eye, "what are you talking about? Can you just tell me why you've been acting so strange lately? I mean... I come home and you're... back to your old self."

"Do you remember my book release party for Storm Fall? After I had killed off Derrick Storm?"

Taken off guard, she brushes her long, dyed hair behind her ear. "Yeah, that's when you admitted to me that you were having writer's block."

"Where I'm from, something happened that night that changed my life forever."

Looking at him as if she's talking to an asylum patient, she continues. "Like... what?"

"That's the night I met her." He says, nodding his head toward the door.

Alexis looks over her shoulder toward the door. "You mean Captain Beckett?"

"She was a detective when I met her, investigating the murder of Alison Tisdale. Alexis," he pauses, taking a hold of her hand, "she inspired me to write again. I went home after she was doing questioning me and I started to write again. You want to know why I never gave up? It's because of her, Alexis. I fell in love with her. In my world, I never gave up because of her. Because of her, I became a better man."

"Dad..." Alexis trails off again, shaking her head and pulling away.

"I _know_," he says, leaning toward her, "how it sounds. But please, Alexis, I can't be trapped in a world where the love of my life looks at me like I'm a complete stranger. I need your help."

Alexis looks down to his hand, then back up to her father's eyes. Even if this is just insane ravings, there's a look in his eyes right now that he's at least committed to something, and to him, it's something important. If this woman is what that something is, if this is what gets her her dad back, maybe she can steer him to see reality by supporting him for a little while. "Okay."

* * *

"Okay, _promise _not to laugh!"

"I promise! Quit stalling, come out already!" He calls back from the bed.

"Okay, ready?" She asks on a tight laugh.

She hears the bed creak from the hallway into the bathroom. "Ready."

Slowly putting her foot out, she twists her ankle around before slowly moving her legs out, arching her back and showing her legs and her ass off for him, knowing how crazy he goes for them, especially in the tightness of her Nebula Nine outfit.

In one fowl twist, she whips out in her mask and sees him jump in fright from the bed, falling to the floor on the other side as she leans sexily against the wall. "Do you like it? Huh?" She asks as he jumps up from the floor.

"That's not what you... that's not..." he stammers as he shuffles away from her.

She smiles evilly behind her Reaver mask, getting her payback for making fun of her and her favorite show. "Want to make out, Castle?" She teases him, sliding her hands down her hips as she wiggles them. "Rawr!" She teases again as his back hits against the door to the living room. She giggles evilly behind her mask as she rounds the bed and he quickly goes through the door, slamming it shut behind him.

"Castle?" She calls for him, putting her ear to the door. "Are we going to make out?" She continues, knocking on the door. "Castle? Come on, you wanted to have fun! I promise I won't bite."

"That's what you said on Halloween!" He calls back, sounding as if he's shuffling around with something.

"Come on, babe, you said you wanted to have fun! So just-"

She's thrown back by the door flying open, sending her stumbling back toward the edge of the bed, the small of her back hitting against the corner of the bed and sending her to her ass as she falls to the floor. Getting ready to yell at him, she reaches up and pulls her mask off, but feels every nerve go haywire at the sight of him.

Standing in the doorway is her boyfriend, clad in a long brown, dark burgundy coat, brown leather boots, brown pants with leather suspenders, and a dirty burgundy button up shirt, holding a silver, futuristic looking revolver in his hand and a confident smirk on his face.

God, he looks so sexy in that coat.

"Never did like the looks of you Federation- Alliance types." He says, pointing the barrel down at her as she gives herself away with an amazed, sexy, open smile, and _very _wanting eyes boring into him. "You expecting me to go down with a fight, you best be willing to wait a while."

She grabs the edge of the bed and pushes herself up, her legs wobbling at the sight of her boyfriend. "I've learned never to put anything passed you..." she trails off, eyes roving over him as she steps forward with a swing in her hips, "outlaws."

"You aiming to lock me up for being an outlaw. You've been trying for years." He says, swinging his revolver on his finger and sliding it into the holster on his side.

"Well then..." She says, slowly walking toward him, swinging her hips and hungrily boring her eyes into him, "maybe the Alliance can make you a deal."

He smirks, looks her over and turns to face her fully. "Always making yourself come out on top?"

"That's the way I like it, outlaw." She says, coming a step away from him. "You want to go free? Here's the deal." She tells him, reaching over to him, grabbing his suspenders and pulling herself forward. "You lose... _everything," _she says in a husky voice as she yanks herself against him and entwines her breath with his, "but the coat stays on."

He smiles and reaches down, grabbing her thighs and pulling her up. She lets out a happy giggle, feeling a euphoric love overcome her as she whips her legs around his waist, pulls at the back of his hair and latches onto his mouth, her tongue quickly delving inside with a deep, hearty moan. With his fingers pressing hard into the back of her thighs, squeezing her legs, she steers him around and sends him down to the bed, her heart flickering inside of her chest like a butterfly. She lands on top of him, her hands pressing him into the bed by his chest.

"We either have a very healthy sex life," he says, breaking the roleplay as his hands slide up her legs around the curve of her ass, "or a very disturbed one."

"Let's go with the former and keep kissing, okay?"

He smiles at her and leans up, capturing her mouth again.

* * *

"Hphmm..." she giggles, twisting her head against the throw pillow on her couch. "You know I'm ticklish right there, Castle. Stop it and get this thing off me."

Beckett slowly opens her eyes, feeling her body still tingle and gyrate, her center coiling wildly. Once she realizes she's awake, she pushes herself upright off her couch and looks around, not seeing him. In the emptiness of her apartment, she looks up to the TV and sees it's left on, tuned to the Nebula Nine marathon he'd told her about. She feels her system fall in deep annoyance as she reaches up and presses her palm into her aching head, groaning.

"Uhhh..." she groans, closing her eyes, "Why'd it have to be a sex dream?"

A knock on her door snaps her out of the dream, her once hot and very bothered body coming back to reality.

"Coming," she calls to whoever's at the door and pushes herself up off her couch, shaking her baggy shirt out. "One day and he's already got me dreaming about him." She laments to herself as she heads for the door. She opens the door as she's pushing her hair back and sees a young teenager at the door, holding a paper bag of food with the Remy's logo on the front.

"One double cheeseburger, extra pepper jack cheese, lettuce, onions, no mustard, no tomato, with curly fries, and a large strawberry shake." The teen says with a smile, handing her the food.

"Uh..." she stammers, being confused. That's her usual order, down to the letter, but... "I didn't order anything."

"Oh, it's uh..." the teen says, looking at the recipe. "Compliments of a... Rick Castle."

Beckett stares at the bag as he hands it to her. Confused, she takes the bag. "Thank you."

"Enjoy," the teen says and moves down the hall.

She shuts the door slowly, turns and sets the food down to her coffee table. Looking down at the bag, containing her exact usual order from Remy's, she feels her dream flutter into her mind again as her headache briefly subsides. Her eyes travel to the hallway that leads to her bedroom and before she realizes it, she's dashing toward the closed door to her bedroom, is whipping it open and moving toward the closet. She clicks on the light as quick as she can and goes to the far corner, reaching for the dusty box in the far corner of the top shelf of her closet.

She pulls it down, sets it to the floor and kneels down, pulling the folded flaps apart and starts to dig through the box until she feels the fabric of her old Nebula Nine costume. With hitched breath, she pulls it out until it's lying in her hands. When she sees it, the dream flashes in her mind again, perfectly clear.

Scared, she stuffs the costume back into the box and shoves it away from her, quickly getting to her feet. She moves out of her closet in a light, tightly-muscled glide, her posture stiff.

"It was just a dream, Kate." She says to herself as she moves back down the hall into her living room. She reaches up to her mouth, tracing her lips with her finger, knowing that she can still feel his mouth on her, feel his hair in her fingers, feel his waist around her legs. "It was just a dream."

* * *

_A/N: Some people have reviewed, asking me if I was going to show the "other side". Hadn't really planned on it. But with this chapter, I think you'll see why. What'd you think of the Nebula Nine- Firefly cosplay between Rick and Kate? Always wanted to write that one shot. ;)_


	4. Chapter 4

The sling his arm is trapped in isn't helping, neither is the new layout of his loft.

Or her loft.

After getting released from the hospital a few days ago, he's finally able to start taking what little of his other life back, making the best of the bad situation this version of himself got him into. The talk he needs to have with his mother about removing that giant abomination of a portrait taking up an entire wall of his... or her... office will probably be the first step he wants to take. Even from the kitchen as he unpacks the paper sack of groceries with his one good arm, he can feel his mother's eyes staring into him.

This must have been what Kate felt about Linus. It's like... she's boring into his soul.

Castle forces his eyes to look away, briefly catching a glimpse of his little girl working tirelessly at his desk. If he loses everything else in his life, which he has, he can at least smile knowing at the end of the day, even this world's him was a good enough father to make Alexis stick by him. He can't be sure if he could handle going through this if not for her willingness to help him. He can see a very obvious twinge of doubt in her eye when he talks to her about all of this, but he knows how all of this sounds.

He unpacks the chicken breasts, the spices, the parmesan, and the salad, laying it all out in the counter before grabbing the paper bag and smashing it against his side in a crumpled up ball that he hooks into the garbage can on the other side of the kitchen like a basketball. The painkillers haven't dulled his mood, thankfully, and he knows the look of a worried family concerned of this world's Castle developing a drug addiction because of prescription painkillers.

The drawers are completely out of order. It's his first discovery he makes while searching for a cookie sheet to start dinner on. "Like my office isn't enough, you have to rearrange my kitchen too?" He murmurs to himself.

The door to the loft opens and he hears the distinct humming of his mother, followed by her loud vocal exercises. "Lay la _looo_." She says loudly, raising and lowering the pitch of her voice with every sound.

"Where do you keep the cookie sheets, Mother?" He asks her, searching from cupboard to cupboard.

Martha doesn't respond when she sees her son in the kitchen, neatly dressed in a silk white button-up dress shirt and dark black jeans, his arm still wrapped in a dark blue sling. "What are you doing, Richard?" She asks as she paces slowly toward the kitchen, a large purple leather bag hanging from her forearm.

Castle stops and stands up from searching in the lower cupboards, looking over his shoulder at her with a curious brood. "Making dinner, why?"

His mother's brow shoots up in surprise. "_You're _making dinner?" She asks him, stunned as she points at him.

His eyes move away from her for a second, not knowing what she's talking about. "Don't I always make dinner?"

She lets her bag fall to the floor with a clatter and quickly drifts her way into the kitchen in front of him. Without warning, she lifts her hand, putting the back of her fingers to his forehead for a few seconds. She removes her hand and waves her fingers at him. "Richard, are you feeling alright? I thought the doctor told you to keep the dosage to a minimum."

"I feel fine, Mother." He says with a knit in his brow. "Now, can you please point me in the direction of the baking apparel? Alexis hasn't eaten all day and she's been working really hard."

"Well," she says on a hard chuckle, "Richard, the last time you cooked for the family was... well, was Thanksgiving three years ago and I think we both remember how that little disaster turned out."

"Call it good fortune that I don't. Now, cookie sheet... please?"

She stares at him with a soft, inscrutable gaze before moving her hand over to the cupboard next to her head and opening it for him. "They're in here."

He lets out a relieved breath, hoping the conversation is over as he grabs for a large baking sheet with his one good arm. "Thank you."

"Any time, Darling." She says as she sashays out of the kitchen.

"Dad!" He hears Alexis call from the other side of the loft.

He looks up from the counter and sees his daughter, her hair tied back into a low hanging ponytail, wearing loose, dark-colored clothing while carrying her laptop on her arm. He quickly moves out of the kitchen, around the island and through the living room just as Alexis is folding her legs underneath herself as she sits down onto the couch that faces in the completely wrong direction. "What'd you find, sweetie?" He asks, sitting down on the couch next to her.

Alexis looks over to her father and his concentrated gaze, filled with a brightness and eagerness she hasn't seen in years, and she scoots herself closer to him, turning the laptop screen toward him. "I did some digging on that Incan artifact you pulled up yesterday."

"Any clue on how to use it?" He asks her, looking away from the screen.

"It's all myth and legend as far as I can tell." She dismisses. "But I did find something else that might help. One of the leading experts in ancient civilizations published a paper in 2014 about an Incan ruler who founded the Empire around 1200 CE."

He tries his hardest not to get sucked in by pride and amazement at his daughter, looking at her speak and explain to him her findings with such excitement.

"The legend of the empire's founding as of a staff gifted to their ruler by the sun." She explains, pointing at the screen of the ancient depictions. "The paper claimed that the centerpiece of this staff," she says, pointing at the screen of an ancient hieroglyph of a stone circle, encased around a line of stones and a decorative center, "wasn't the first of its kind to be seen in ancient texts."

"What do you mean?" He asks.

"He claimed that the symbol for this centerpiece was used in civilizations dating all the way back to the Olmec in 1200 BC. He went on to claim that this symbol was also seen in some of the earliest stonework of the Harappan civilization in Indus Valley and that it must have had some significance and that when the Spanish conquered the Incas in 1532, whatever this centerpiece was, it was lost."

"Does it say what this thing does?"

"He says that while all cultures have their own stories and interpretations, the same mythos is pretty much the same in that this centerpiece has the power to grant the wielder their deepest desires."

He ignores the cold bullet going through him. The thought that his deepest desire was that they had never even met because she was better off without him is something he probably still hasn't come to grips with. "So who is this guy?"

Alexis clicks over to another tab in her browser. "Professor Graham Mansfield. He used to teach out of Columbia before he was forced to resign."

"Forced to resign? Why?"

"Because of the claims made," she says, clicking back to her other tab, "in this paper. The archeology community started mocking his findings relentlessly after this paper was published. He's since published independently about," she trails off, clicking through her browser, "the Bimini road, the Antikythera mechanism... Atlantis..."

"So he didn't back down from his findings."

"And according to his website, he still works out of his home office here in New York."

* * *

Nervously bouncing her foot up and down with her legs crossed, Kate sits drumming her thumbs together in her lap, her heart tightening anxiously under her straining lungs. She clears her throat in the emptiness of the room as she stares at the empty seat directly across from her.

She hasn't done this in... a decade, at least. But she's out of options. She's starting to lose sleep. A lot of sleep.

It's been nearly five days with this massive headache, and she's yet to find anything that helps. There's something else going on and there's only so much a bottle of Aleve can do. Her detectives are starting to notice her lagging. She can't run a precinct like this. She can barely even function like this. She needs it to stop and she can't drug her way out of this. If she's going insane, she'd rather have it be said by a professional, rather than her WebMD searches.

She nervously adjusts herself in the large armchair and grabs onto her knee with her clasped, sweaty hands when she hears the door open. "Sorry I'm late." The doctor says. She readies herself to stand up to greet him but he stops her as he's making his way through his office. "No, please, Captain." He says, lifting his hand.

Beckett smiles anxiously as she leans back into the armchair and recrosses her legs, twisting the heel of her stiletto into the carpet, watching as the doctor sets his paperwork down on the small table at the other side of the room before making his way over to the chair across from her. "Thank you for seeing me on such short notice, Doctor Burke."

"My pleasure," he says with a casual wave of his hand as he leans back into the chair. "Is this your first time in therapy?"

She shakes her head, avoiding eye contact by looking down to her hands. "No, I've uh... I saw a therapist for a while when I first got out of the academy, so about... sixteen, seventeen years ago."

"Okay," Burke nods slowly. "What's going on that made you want to see me?"

She clears passed the lump in her throat and adjusts herself again, smoothing her hands down her shins over her slacks and curls her toes inside of her heels. "I'm having dreams."

There's a thick pause between her and the therapist. After a few seconds, she looks up to see him staring at her, his face pulled into a quizzical gaze. "Okay," he nods, looking away and playing along. "What are these dreams about?" He asks her on a shrug.

Her heart flickers wildly inside of her chest as her body heats up at the thoughts flashing into her mind. "U-umm..." she stutters, pinching her brow together. "They're usually about uh... well, see, I'm usually not one to dream about things like... it's just that these dreams are..." she keeps trying, still avoiding eye contact at all costs by looking about the room, "... intimate... in nature."

She can see the moment when Burke gets the picture by his eyes glancing away from her and his head giving her a slow nod. "So... they're sex dreams?"

Her skin flushes into a cold, violent sweat at his speaking so bluntly and she presses her palms together in her lap. "You could say that."

Burke adjusts himself and puts his elbows onto the arms of his chair. "For how long?"

"About five days." She answers, feeling the further explanation tug at the back of her throat. "And they're always with the same person."

The doctor gives her another slow nod before prodding further. "And do you know who this person is?"

"Well-" she starts in a tight, nervous voice, "not exactly. I-I mean, I do _know _who he is but... but not really _know-_know who is he. I mean, we're not really friends or anything, but not enough to be like-"

"Captain," he stops her, lifting his hand with a smile. "It's okay. So... you have met this person."

She clears her throat and sits up straight in the armchair. "Yes." She states plainly. "I met him last week. His name is Richard Castle."

"And these dreams," he starts, moving himself in his chair, "they're all involving him?" She nods, giving him an affirmative nod. "Are they all sex dreams?"

Her throat closes as she recalls the one that sent her here, the one she had last night. "Yes."

"And what about these dreams is troubling you exactly?"

She sniffs a breath in hard and grabs onto her knee again. "They don't feel like normal dreams."

Burke nods again slowly. "How so?"

Her eyes move down to her lap again as an image flashes perfectly clear in her mind, being so real in her imagination that she can feel the heat from the candles, smell the scent from the wax, feel the surface of the hardwood floor on her bare feet, feel the desire and the want course through her as she sees his eyes dance with amazement in the light of the fire from the candles and the fireplace. "Because I can remember them."

"Well," the therapist starts casually, shrugging his shoulders, "it's perfectly normal to recall details of dreams."

"No, you don't understand." She defends herself, finally making eye contact. "These feel different."

"Okay," the therapist tries, looking away and seeming to decide on his approach, "when you say they feel different..."

"I..." she sighs longingly as she looks out the blinds covering the windows. "They just feel... more real somehow."

Burke looks down for a moment before glancing at her for a second. "You said you met this man last week?" He asks her. She answers him with a single nod, not looking in his direction as she plants her elbow on the arm of the chair and leans against her fist. "Well, Kate... what you're describing sounds like fantasy playing itself out in your dreams."

She looks at him in an impatient, deadpan gaze with her fist mashed against her mouth. She pushes herself off the side of the chair as she reaches into the inside pocket of her blazer, pulling out a set of papers folded into fours. "That's what I thought," she starts as she unfolds the evidence she printed out this morning. She knows he wants to ask, but knows that he's staying silent waiting for her to tell him.

As she looks at the picture printed on the gloss paper stapled to the listing, the memory of her dream takes over her senses. "In the dream I had last night, we were in a bedroom that I didn't recognize. I was in this... small lacey nightgown, surrounded by candles with a bed in the center of the room. He was under the covers waiting for me as I went around the room lighting them. We uh... we bantered for a bit about him coming up with a new book idea and I threw out a line as I crawled onto the bed about... getting what she desired most before we..." she trails off, feeling her heart pound.

"And..." Burke continues for her, "what stuck out about this dream?"

Her body feels light, fluttering, almost floating as she feels his arms encase her and the heat from his skin warm her as he gently steamrolled himself onto of her with her lips fighting to keep kissing him over her intense, face-splitting smile. "The bedroom we were in had something that I couldn't get out of my mind."

"Which was?" He asks after a pause.

She clears her throat again as she looks at the photo. "It had an anchor... sitting inside of a fireplace." She says, reaching over and handing him the photo of the room.

Burke takes the photo from her and takes it in for a few seconds before looking over the top of it and back at her. "Is this a mock-up of the room you saw?"

"That _is _the room I saw." She says as she desperately leans forward. "That's the downstairs master suite of a beachside mansion in the Hamptons." She explains, holding onto the real estate listing between her fingers tightly. "Doctor, I pulled that photo off of a real estate auction site." she continues, handing over the listing to him. "That mansion was put up for auction three years ago by Richard Castle."

Burke looks back at her with a blank expression.

"Doctor Burke, I've never even _been _to the Hamptons before, but I'm dreaming of making love to him in the downstairs master suite of a beach house he used to own?"

The therapist only answers by looking away and refolding the papers for her, handing them back to her, and leaning back into his armchair. "Kate..." he starts in a questioning tone, "are you in any... serious relationships?"

Taken aback, she answers. "No."

"Have you been? Have you gone through any break-ups recently?"

"No," she answers again.

"Are you seeing anyone?"

"No, what-" she stutters, leaning forward again and planting her heels into the carpet, "what does this have to do with anything?"

"Kate, this isn't that uncommon among career-driven women." He says with a casual shake of his head and a soft smile. "You're in your mid-thirties, you've spent your life dedicated to your career. It's not that uncommon for women, and for men, to play out fantasies through dreams. Often times, people who pursue a career into their thirties often have trouble settling down, raising a family. And for someone in your position, with a stressful and demanding job, it's not surprising that your mind is playing out a fantasy of... maybe of a life you wished you had gone after instead."

She lets out an unsatisfying breath and feels herself lean back into the chair, looking at him with a vacant, wistful gaze. "But Doctor, these dreams aren't normal." She defends herself. "When I'm with him in these dreams, I'm..." she trails off, looking back out the window, "it's not just lust, or... or meaningless sex, or some petty attempt to save a relationship. I-it's... something I've never had before. Every time I have another dream like this one, it's like I'm..."

When she doesn't answer, and when Burke sees her eyes start to brim with emotional tears, he prods gently. "Like you're what?"

She looks at him with emotion glistening from her eyes. "It's like I found the love of my life." She says, her throat closing. "But he's still a stranger to me."

* * *

_A/N: Sorry for the week-long break. Had some stuff to do. Let me know by keeping the reviews coming! :D_


	5. Chapter 5

"You sure this is the place?" He asks as they exit the elevator.

Alexis is the first out into the hallway, looking over her shoulder with a smile. "This is the address he has listed."

Rick lengthens his stride when Alexis turns down the hallway ahead of him, wanting to catch up with her. She's been very eager to help him. He doesn't know how long it's been in this world since they've spent time together like this and he doesn't want to ask. He already feels the need to make up for more things than are his fault in his own universe, he doesn't need to start making a list in this one too. But whether or not she believes him and his literal out-of-this-world claims of his, she's excited to be a part of his life again.

With his arm still in a sling and his shoulder still throbbing with an uncomfortable dull pain, turning sharp every time he decides to move it out of place, Rick catches up to her just as she's raising her hand to knock on a door on the right side of the hallway. Once he's caught up and taking the last few steps, he hears a commotion coming from the other side of the door with a loud coughing fit erupting from inside.

"Just a moment!" They hear a man say with a slightly nasal tone and an accent hinting at being from a northern province of the UK. "Just-just a moment, I'll be right there."

Alexis and her father meet eyes for a moment, looking to each other to gauge the situation. Alexis knows the smell in the air too well.

The door opens and the smell wafts out into the hallway, the aroma blasting them in the face like the heat from an oven being opened. Rick grimaces backward, shaking his head. "Oh..." he waves his hand in front of him.

"Professor Graham Mansfield?" Alexis asks as Rick puts his forearm over his mouth and nose.

The short-statured, thinly grey-haired man in a pair of loose grey slacks, pale blue button-up shirt and an argyle sweater vest looks over his frameless glasses at the two of them, his eyes first catching sight of the college-aged girl, then of the sling her father's arm is in. "I'm sorry, young lady, but I don't deal."

As the door is being shut, Alexis calls back to him. "We're not here for that."

"Please tell me I had the drug talk with you in this universe." Rick strains over his shirtsleeve.

Eyeing her father for a second with a small smile, she looks back to the professor. "I'm Alexis and this is my dad, Richard Castle. We wanted to talk to you about a paper you wrote two years ago."

"Yes," Rick starts, reaching with a clumsy reach into his coat pocket to pull out a piece of paper, unfolding it against his chest, "this." He shows the professor the picture of the artifact.

Mansfield adjusts his glasses, pushing them up to his nose by the temple. "Ah," he says, only bothering to look at the photo for a second before smiling and turning away, "yes, that thing." He laments as he sloths back into his apartment, shoulders slumped downward.

Alexis and her dad meet eyes for a second before Rick takes the lead ahead of her and steps inside after him, leaving Alexis to close the door behind her. Inside, the professor is walking back through his apartment, over to a window with a small table beside it, a single wooden chair in front of it with a black metallic ashtray and a joint resting on its edge, smoke rising from the end.

"So, you recognize it then," Rick states, keeping himself in front of his daughter protectively.

"Yes, I recognize it," Mansfield says as he reaches for the joint. "I spent a greater part of two years researching that trinket before-" he stops to draw in a large hit of the joint in between his fingers, letting it out in a long puff of smoke against the window pane, "-my fellow scientists ran me out of the institution for-" he pauses to let out the last of the drug from his lungs and turns back to them, waving the joint in the air, "-for _daring _to question the seemingly biblical standard of Clovis first."

"Clovis first?" Rick asks.

Alexis steps up to her dad's side, putting a hand gently on his arm. "I read about it in my research. Clovis First is the leading theory of the Clovis culture from the Paleo-Indian era being the first to inhabit the Americas." She tells him in a hushed voice, hugging herself against her dad's side.

"A community that used to call me well-respected, a community of scientists no doubt," he professor says as he flicks the end of his joint against the ashtray and rests it against the edge again, turning around toward his desk on the other side of the room, "seem unwilling to accept evidence that shake the sands of which they built the foundations of their theory. It seems all I can do to get a single person to listen to me."

Rick looks to his daughter with a lidded gaze before looking back to the professor, who's sliding papers around on his desk. "There is us, Professor."

Mansfield looks over his shoulder with an impassive stare before waving papers in each hand around in front of him. "I mean a single person with some credentials, in the least. Now," he says, tossing the papers back down to his desk and adjusting his glasses again, coming to stand back in front of the father and daughter, his hands stuffed into the baggy pockets of his grey slacks, "what is it that you want to know?"

"This," Rick says, flashing him to picture of the artifact again and handing it to him. The professor looks at it more intently than he had at first. "What do you know about it?"

"Well," the professor says in a light, informative tone, "the legends span cultures, time immemorial. All have their own version of the story behind it, but much like the great flood story, the central theme stays the same. In that, an artifact is granted to a mortal or some power is gifted by the gods, usually represented by the sun, with the ability to grant the individual their deepest desire. Throughout history, this power is usually held by those who want to lead civilizations, men who..." he explains, waving the paper about, "look at themselves as more than mere men."

"So, what you're saying is this thing has traveled down from civilization to civilization?" Alexis asks, trying to follow the professor's thinking.

"What I'm saying, young lady," Mansfield says as he grabs for another paper on his desk, busying himself and talking hurriedly and uninterested as he works, "is that the men in these legends are usually those whose deepest desire is that of a leader, an emperor, a king, a demigod, whatever name they go by, they all usually want power. This object is usually used in carvings as a symbol of that power."

"If this artifact was so important, how'd it disappear?" Alexis asks.

"Because when the Spanish conquistadors sacked the Incan Empire in 1532 at the Battle of Cajamarca, Pizzaro already had power. This object was used to _start _civilizations, young lady, not carry them. The Sun Disk," he says, briefly looking over his shoulder, "as the natives called it, was lost to history after that."

"What if," Rick interjects himself, "hypothetically," he prefaces cautiously as he takes a step forward, "someone found it."

The doctor glances over his shoulder after grabbing another set of papers from those strewn about his desk for a second, looking back at Rick with an eye roll, but stops when he sees Rick looking at him with a wide, cautious glare. The professor slowly lets the papers fall down to his sides as he turns to face the pair.

"And what if, hypothetically, someone accidentally used it to alter an event in history?"

"Then, hypothetically, I would advise that someone, whoever he-" his eyes then travel to Alexis "or she... might be, to use very..." he says, his voice starting to shake and tighten as he paces toward them, "_very_ extreme caution in how you go about using this object. The natural course of events is meant to play out in a very particular way and it does not like to be changed. Visualize a string, Mr. Castle." He says, putting his hands in front of him. "At rest, the string is inert. Now, if you will, imagine yourself plucking that string and along that string is the lives of _billions _of people."

"It wasn't anything like that. I only made it so I never met my fiance." He defends himself against an increasingly distressed and crazed looking professor.

"Mr. Castle," he exclaims in a scared voice, approaching him within a few feet, "let me borrow a line from one of your American films and say that you need to think fourth-dimensionally, Marty!" He hisses.

"What do you mean?" Alexis asks him, stepping up in between the two of them.

"Uh..." Mansfield stutters and quickly paces away from the pair, tapping his chin and jaw with his fingers. He spins back around and wags his finger at them. "March 7th, 1936."

"Marth 7th, 1936?" The two ask in unison.

"Yes, you see," he starts to explain, pacing back and forth in a small line in front of them, "the Rhineland was a region west of Germany that was demilitarized after the first World War. The German army under orders of their new leader, dispatched three lightly armed battalions into the Rhineland west of Germany. It was the first time the Germans had violated the Treaty of Versailles. It was a gamble that ultimately paid off, in that when the German Army marched across the bridge into the Rhineland at 11:00 AM on March 7th, they were met with no resistance from the French. After the war, the Allied forces had discovered through the records that _if _those soldiers had come across any resistance at all on that bridge at the river Rhine, if they had been met by even a single soldier who refused to step out of the way of the Germans, those soldiers would have marched back into Berlin... and they would have shot Hitler in the head themselves."

Alexis and her father both eye each other for another moment, some in anxiousness and some in sorrow.

"Now," the professor continues, catching his breath, "say your greatest desire is to be that one soldier on that bridge who refused to step out of the way. Well, a noble goal to be sure, to prevent the deadliest war in history... at least modern history. But," he says, wagging his finger at them as he paces across the floor of his apartment, "without a second World War, how would America have lifted themselves out of the Great Depression?" He asks them. "And without America to lead the Allied forces and to take the stage as the free world's leader in the late Twentieth century, who would have? Stalinist Russia?"

Rick feels his stomach sink to the floor, his body feeling limp and weak. It was an accident, using that stupid thing in the first place.

"You see, Mr. Castle, like it or not, things happen, however horrific and tragic, for a reason. And I would advise you to make sure you know the consequences and repercussions of using this object, as far reaching as they might be. One cannot tamper with the natural order of things without _severe _backlash."

"But I already tried to set things right." He says, taking a large step toward the professor. "I already tried using the artifact to send me home, but it didn't work."

"Mr. Castle," Mansfield chuckles loudly, "this object is of the Gods. If it didn't work, then that means it already gave you what you wanted. You can lie to yourself all you want, but no man is capable of lying to God."

Rick's breath leaves him. His heart sinks into his feet.

How can this be what he wanted?

He slowly turns around and starts to pace away from the professor and Alexis follows him, putting her hand on his back and stepping into his side supportively as he starts to leave the apartment. "Uh, one more thing... Mr. Castle." Professor Mansfield stops them. Rick turns around with a pale expression. "A far cry for me to be paranoid but... I would also advise you to avoid anyone... official looking."

"What do you mean?" Alexis asks for him.

"In 1979, the federal government started testing two college students who claimed to have the ability to uh-bend spoons with their minds." He starts anxiously. "After four years of experimenting and millions of taxpayer dollars, they had discovered that the two had in fact faked the entire time." He says, eying the two. "I'd hate to see what they'd do to a man claiming to have the ability to alter the course of history."

* * *

On a deep, determined sigh, he makes another turn down another aisle of matching evidence boxes. "It's gotta be around here somewhere." He mutters to himself as he quickly moves down the aisle.

His fingers trace the numbers on the boxes, looking for the right one. He's been down here enough times to know how the cataloging system of the NYPD evidence lock-up works. Standing in the middle of the aisle, his neck craned back to look up at the boxes on the top shelf, he searches for the box he's looking for.

But her, she's standing at the end of the aisle, words failing her as she sees him again. When she'd gotten word that he was here, she was more elated that she wants to admit to. But now, after tracking him down to evidence, she feels at a loss as to what to feel toward him. Yes, he's very handsome, he probably feels a little bit better since his arm is out of that sling she last saw him in at the hospital.

Still, every dream she had feels fresh in her mind. Every sensation, every emotion, every feeling, every touch. It's all so foreign to her. So alien. She feels as if she's supposed to feel close to him, like she has a deep-seated intimacy with him on a level where she knows him inside and out. But he's still a complete stranger. She's banking on her therapist being right, in that it's just some fantasy gone wild. That, she can control at least. She can stomp it away.

"Mr. Castle?" She asks, startling him and making him jump back into the shelves.

As Rick jumps, his heart skipping at the sound of her voice, he turns to see her in a black skirt coming to her knees, black pumps, a white blouse with a waving flourish in the front that moves up the valley of her breasts, and a black blazer, her hair tied back into a bun with her bangs hanging down. His stomach folds when he sees her again, wanting to correct himself.

It's not his Kate. He has to remember that. "Captain Beckett." He says with a smile. "I didn't expect you down here."

Kate smiles softly as she clasps her hands in front of her, trying to play it off as she approaches him. "We already have an intern to sort boxes for us, Mr. Castle." She tells him, coming to lean against the edge of the aisle he's standing in.

"No, I was just uh..." he trails off, looking back up to the boxes in front of him, "looking for the evidence from the coal plant."

"It's right here." She says, pulling out a box next to her and setting it down to the small table at the end of the aisle. "Still," she starts, her chest tightening nervously as she steps back, "I thought I'd at least earn a visit or two from the man who took a bullet for me."

Rick smiles heavily at her, his heart wanting, more than anything, to get sucked in by her beauty. He misses the real her so damn much. But there's a look in her eyes that's missing. "I didn't want to get in the way." He says and quickly steps in front of the box, pulling off the lid haphazardly with his one good arm and careful not to move his other shoulder too much.

She nods at him silently, watching from behind as he goes about digging through the box. It's only another tense moment, feeling an intense pull in her system when she catches his focused and determined features as he searches through the evidence box. Her week-long headache slowly creeps back around her head as her hand's tingle with the want to pull at his face and take his lips, press him back with her body and trap him in between her and the wall with a passionate kiss.

But Rick, after searching underneath a few evidence bags, he finds it near the bottom. In a large bag, he sees the golden markings of the artifact and grabs for it eagerly. He takes the bag in his hand but feels his entire world fall away, his heart crumbling into pieces when he sees the artifact cracked into two pieces from a single bullet hole in the center.

Kate notices his face pale as he holds the bag in his hand. "Something wrong?" She asks casually, keeping her hands clasped together for her own good.

His hand falls weakly back into the evidence box and he forces a smile over his shoulder at her. "Fine." When she watches him grab the front edge of the box and shove it away, she nods and shuffles back a small step. "I just lost my one hope at getting home is all." He murmurs, his voice slurring.

His eyes sting hotly as he fights his emotions. It can't end like this.

He's stuck here. He abandoned her all over again.

It's over.

* * *

_A/N: The scene will continue in the next chapter. Didn't want this one to run long. Let me know what you think. Professor Mansfield liked enough to make another appearance maybe? :O_


	6. Chapter 6

Her fingers squeeze around her thumb in a tight grip. There's a need inside of her to keep her hands occupied with something, to busy them with anything.

Because there's also an intense drive in her system that she's never... ever felt before. With her head aching painfully, there's a feeling inside of her, inside of her heart, telling her to close the distance between them. Not out of lust, because he is very attractive. If she had a lot less self-control and even less shame, she probably would have done it already just for the thrill. But this pull, this drive inside of her, is something different. Her dreams are giving her a sense of deep intimacy with him that she just can't for the life of her make any sort of sense of.

She has memories of what his arms and his lips and his body feels like, but no actual feeling behind it. Like she can describe a food she's never even tasted before.

His baby blue eyes are echoing with a hard pang of sadness as he looks down into the evidence box. She can only stare at them from her place behind him for a few seconds before she has to physically check herself back into place, shaking her head in a small motion and looking back at the floor, catching her breath which she had just realized she had lost.

Her headache pulsates around her skull again when she looks away and clears her throat. "Mr. Castle?" She softly prods.

Rick aches at the sound of her voice, knowing it's her but at the same time, a complete stranger from the woman he was just about to promise his life to. "Yeah?" He manages over the thick blockade his emotions put up around his throat.

Beckett shifts her feet a bit nervously, wringing her hand around her thumb before she asks. "You talked before about," she attempts to get the insane sounding words out in a serious enough tone, "about you and I meeting in some... other place." She minces her words and looks down to the floor. "You seem pretty convinced of it, so I guess I'm just wondering who I was."

Rick turns his head to try and look over his shoulder at her, to at least give her the courtesy of looking her in the eye, but can't manage it besides a small twist of his neck.

"I mean," she chuckles halfheartedly, "you said you loved me in that coal plant, so..." she says, feeling her heart clench uncomfortably at the use of the word, "I'm just curious who I was to you."

Rick cranes his neck downward, his heart pulling violently as he imagines her in her wedding dress, standing in front of him underneath the gazebo in the Hamptons, giving him the chance to tell her how much he loves her, how she inspired him to not only write again but inspired him to become something so much more than what he ever believed he could be and inspired him to be a better man, all before he made the promise to devote his life to her.

But he screwed that up too.

He chuckles darkly to himself as he opens his eyes and looks to a spot to his right against the wall and nods to it. "It was right over there." He says in a light voice as the memory floats back into his mind. "I found this place just below your right earlobe," he says, making a circle over the spot on himself, "that makes you jump whenever I kiss it."

Beckett's heart flutters violently as a tingle rushes up her neck, and knowing he can't see her, she reaches up and traces the spot on her neck just below her earlobe with the pad of her index finger, her blood turning thin at the fantasy of his lips brushing across it.

"If I were the man I made myself into for you," he continues as he looks back down into the box, "you would have been my wife."

Her breath hitches violently, even audibly to herself, when his words hit her brain. This is clearly just insanity. This complete stranger expects her to believe that they were supposed to get married?

"But for whatever reason, I decided to abandon you on our wedding day and leave you standing at the altar." He tells her in a very emotionally heavy voice, his sadness dripping off every syllable. He draws in a long, shaky breath that straightens his posture and rolls his stinging shoulders back. "So for the time being," he says on a deep sigh, "you're just my fiance."

"I-I..." she struggles, her eyes narrowing and her head shaking, trying to make sense of him. "You said you left on the day we were supposed to get married?" She asks, not believing a single word even as it leaves her mouth.

His heart quivers painfully and his eyes burn hotly, the image he had in his mind just moments ago of their perfect wedding day now poisoned by her in her wedding dress, knowing he broke her heart because he never showed. "Yeah."

Beckett's throat wants to constrict, but she doesn't let it and gives his back a simple nod. "Well... knowing me, that be a pretty hard thing to get passed." She tells him, trying to be honest. "I'm not sure I could manage it."

Rick's teeth clench to himself. "Line forms to my left, Kate."

Her breath stops short of her lungs when she hears him, looking back up to the dark, despondent look in his eyes. All she can see now is the dark looks of a man who's angry at himself and angry at the world for being at his wit's end, at a dead end and who's mad at himself for turning down a road that leads to nowhere. Whatever this pull in her system is, she casts it away and corrects herself. "Look, Mr. Castle, you're clearly going through a rough time with... whatever it is you're dealing with, so... I-I think it's best we put some distance between us." She says as professionally as she can.

Rick sighs hard to himself, tired of pretentions and charades with her, whatever version he's dealing with. "You're scared because you've never let anyone get close enough to where you had to put distance between you in the first place." He answers back plainly, looking straight ahead.

Beckett starts backward out of evidence as she continues. "Please, don't try to pretend you know me."

When he hears the click of her heels against the linoleum floor moving away from him, he speaks. "You never had a nightlight as a kid."

His words spear her. Her entire body clenches violently, her head spinning and her lungs emptying in a single gasp as she grabs onto the side of the shelf at the end of the aisle. She spins around with a whip and sees him turned around, looking straight through her with an etched expression.

He takes a slow step toward her and continues. "It wasn't because you were afraid of the dark. You were. But you always felt it a point of pride to just stare it down. You always felt the need to never let it see you flinch, even if you were scared."

She blinks rapidly a few times and shakes her head, ending the motion with an empty grin. "Nice parlor trick, Mr. Castle." She says and turns back around.

"You had your tonsils taken out when you were nine." He says in a clear cut voice that pierces right through her and makes her stop mid-stride. She whips back around and sees him looking her dead in the eye, confidence and seriousness in his expression as he stares at her. "You were pretty miserable, so your mother stayed home and cuddled up with you and watched reruns of Temptation Lane until you got better."

She can't breathe, can't even think, or feel as he continues to pace his way toward her, almost menacingly.

"You're also a huge fan of Saved By The Bell and dressed as Gene Simmons on Halloween when you were eleven."

As he approaches her, she wants to put her hand out to stop him, but can't move. She's paralyzed. Who is he?

Rick looks away from her frozen, wide-eyed expression and down to her left wrist. With a smooth motion, he takes her wrist in his hand and lifts it up, petting the leather band of the wristwatch with his thumb. "I know why you wear the watch." He says, seeing the scuff marks the watch had before he had it restored for her. "I know you like to keep him close." He continues, knowing she knows. "I know you sometimes worry you spend too much time working and you'll forget to call him once in a while... and that he might fall off the wagon again."

Beckett's heart is pounding violently, painfully in her chest as he gingerly holds her wrist. But everything inside of her comes to a screeching halt when his eyes look up from her father's watch to her neck and she feels his hand move off her wrist. When she sees his hand come into her view, her brain is telling him to shake his hand away, to push it off her. But as his fingers gently brush down the side of her neck, all she can do is flutter her eyelids closed and drift into his touch.

But his touch only lasts a brief second as he pushes the opening of her blouse to the side and tugs at the chain holding the ring, pulling it out from underneath her shirt. He slides his fingers down the chain and she looks down to see him clasp the ring in between his thumb and forefinger.

"And I know why you wear the ring." He says in a low, husky voice. Against everything telling her to shove him away and not even look at him, her eyes flick frightfully up to lock in with his gaze. "I know you built a wall around your heart after she died... how you pushed everyone away so you'd never hurt like that ever again. I know because I bloodied my fingers raw clawing at that wall. And in _my _world," he says softly, showing her the ring, "you took that wall down... and you didn't need this anymore."

Rick looks up as he clutches the ring in a soft grip in front of her, the ring he watched her tuck away for the final time just before he ruined what was to be the first day of the rest of their lives together. But when he looks up to her, he's brought back to reality by the look in her eyes. All he sees is fear.

This isn't his Kate. The woman he loves is out there somewhere, but she's not here.

After a moment, he blinks and looks away, letting the ring fall from his fingers as he puts a large gap in between them. "Apologies, Captain." He says on a chuckle. "It's probably the bottom of the prescription bottle talking."

Without another word, out of fear he might say anything else he'll come to regret once he gathers what senses he can, he steps around her and moves out of the aisle and toward the stairwell.

But Kate, once he pushes passed her, lets the breath she's holding out in a quick huff, half resembling a choked sob. Her hand wrenches up and she grabs onto the front of her blouse, clutching the ring tightly as her eyes burn.

* * *

_Come back. I need to show you something down in evidence. _

She rereads her text message, watching the time sent time grow larger and larger with every passing second. Where the hell is he? She's getting impatient.

In the distance, she finally hears the door open and her body crawls with hot excitement. They'd made an agreement that the precinct was off limits, but she hasn't had him in days and can't wait the three plus hours it would take to get him in her apartment. His footsteps against the linoleum sound off his approach and her stomach coils with anticipation.

"Beckett?" He asks.

Her bottom lip falls in the soft grasp of her teeth as she hides against the darkened wall in between two rows of shelves.

"Beckett, you in here?"

Castle comes to a stop in front of the table and she pounces at him from the shadows. In one quick motion, she launches herself at him, taking him by surprise and grabbing onto his shirt, pushing him back through the aisle and against the opposite wall, down into a chair that sits in between two shelves. Her hands wrench the striped light blue and white dress shirt with the snap buttons that she's been wanting to rip off of him all day and her legs spread to straddle him. She presses herself down against him and puts her mouth over his in a hot fevered kiss, her hand brushing his hair back roughly and her other hand grabbing his jaw.

"Mmm!" He moans in a high pitched, surprised tone as she kisses him. Even when he's not prepared, he's an amazing kisser. She fists his hair and presses against his lips before releasing him in a pleased, wet pluck and leans back as she straddles his lap, his hands hanging out in front of him and his expression hazy.

"What the hell took you so long?" She sighs, moving her hand off his jaw and onto his chest.

"I thought it was work related. I wasn't exactly eager to dig through boxes of evidence after eight hours."

She rolls her eyes and scoffs loudly just before she grabs onto his collar and sends herself back down onto his lips, pressing his mouth open with her lips and moving her tongue inside, her spine crawling in a heavy pang of ecstacy. She kisses him as deeply as she can, moving back to apply as much pressure against him as she can when she feels his hands take her thighs and squeeze.

She takes her tongue back and releases him again, his hair pleasantly disheveled. "Next time, hurry the hell up."

"If I'd known this is what you were after, I would have." He says, raising his brow.

"I didn't want you walking in here with a big, doofy smile on your face, telling everybody in the precinct what we're doing." She says in a whisper, her lips almost brushing against his.

"And instead, you're going to have me walk out of here with a much more telling smile on my _and _your face."

"We'll go out the back." She says just before she descends on his lips again, devouring him in another fever pitch of passion, letting loose a storm of moans as their chests mewl against one another.

"Mmm," she groans when she feels his hands travel up her legs jealously. She sinks her teeth down onto his bottom lip, giving it a light tug for a second and soothes it over by capturing it in between her lips and sucking it in and then going back to kiss him fully. Her heart is pounding with excitement so hard as she mewls against him, a layer of hot sweat breaking out over her skin.

She feels his fingers at the top button of her white blouse and she presses her chest out and lets his well-trained fingers fly down her shirt, unbuttoning it in a flash as he kisses her. Feeling the cold air of the evidence room hit her, she bucks into him and takes the tops of his shirt in a firm grip. She stops kissing him for a moment to give in to her smile and she grins against his lips, letting out a laugh as she rips the snap buttons of his shirt open in one swoop. He gasps loudly and his chest heaves up against her.

"Uhhh..." he moans against her lips, "that was so hot."

She chuckles against his lips and kisses him again. The forbidden edge of all this, knowing that even if this was happening in the privacy of her apartment like she'd planned on this morning, it could spell a disaster for their new relationship, it just adds to the suspense and makes the already incredible physicality of their relationship so much more exciting.

Her hands jealously massage his chest and she continues to kiss him while he pulls at the bare skin of her waist and the small of her back.

But they both jump when her phone rings in the pocket of her slacks. On a gasp, she pries her lips off him and looks to her pocket. Rick's head falls back against the brick of the wall in crestfallen impatience, his shoulders sagging.

"No," she tells him, grabbing the back of his neck, "keep going." She demands and yanks his lips back to her as she digs her phone out. She blindly fiddles as she gives his lips one last hard kiss and steers his lips off her and down the column of her neck. Her thumb taps against the screen of her phone, her boyfriend's lips pressing hot-breathed kisses against her neck, and she puts her phone to her ear.

"Be-_huh-_ckett." She bucks into him, her entire body jolting violently as his lips find _just _the right spot underneath her right earlobe.

"Uh..." Ryan starts on the other end of the line, "Beckett, you okay?"

Rick's lips continue to assault the long expanse of her neck as she fists his hair, pulling him against her and not letting him stop. "Yeah," she says in as normal a tone as she can manage. "Just on the treadmill. What's-" she twists again as he finds the crook of her neck, "-what's up?"

"DNA came back on our victim. It wasn't a match for the other murder, but Gates wants us to keep looking for a connection."

Kate massages the back of his scalp with her nails and steers his lips down the length of her collarbone, her head going limp and her mind going blank at the incredible feeling. "Okay," she slurs, "I'll head down to evidence and..." she says, moving her hand out of his hair and down to his shirt, pushing it haphazardly down his back, "get to work." She tells him, eyeing the appealing bare skin of her boyfriend's well toned back.

Not bothering with a goodbye, she hangs up and lets her phone fall out of her hand and clatter onto the floor to free her hand and push his shirt off his shoulders that much quicker, taking his lips back as quickly as she can. With his chest completely bare, she mewls against him as she presses him back into the wall.

"You know," He says against her lips, "you have no idea how many times I've had this fantasy."

She smiles against him, sliding her palms down his heaving chest as her undone blouse falls off one shoulder. "Making your dreams come true, huh?"

She feels him smile against her lips and she pulls back when she feels his hand slide gently up to cup her cheek. She looks back, sinking herself into his palm and putting her hand over it and petting his knuckles with her thumb, looking back into his soft, loving gaze. "You are my dream come true."

* * *

On a long breath into vibrating body, she feels her eyes peel open.

Once she realizes she's staring at the ceiling of her office, Beckett pushes herself upright and sees she's fallen asleep on her couch that sits adjacent to her desk. But everything is still happening to her. Her heart is still racing wildly, her skin is still hotly flushed, her lips still feel tingly and raw, her hands still feel jealous from his chest, her legs still feel like they're mewling against his hips.

An angry flash boils into her system and she fights with the air in front of her on a tight groan of frustration before forcing her aching head down into the grip of her fingers, pulling at her hair.

It's not happening. They're just dreams.

They're just wild fantasies, just like her therapist said.

Because whatever she keeps feeling in these dreams just can't be real.

* * *

_A/N: Let me know what you thought of this dream. Got pretty hot'n'heavy, huh? ;)_

_I have one or two more planned, semi one shots I want to sprikle in that are two short to just post on their own, so I'll add them here. Let me know what you think. _


	7. Chapter 7

A painful twinge in his shoulder is the only reminder he has of reality. Because if not for the pain, he'd be convinced none of this is real. He can't be stuck here.

"... _But find you in the day,"_ the song continues softly in the background, playing out of his laptop sitting in the seat of an armchair in the corner of the office, "_Oh, you're in my veins..." _

A soft chuckle breaks him out of staring aimlessly at the wall. He turns quickly, grasping cautiously at his injured shoulder and sees Alexis standing in the doorway of the office with a plate in her hand. She looks at her father with an amused grimace and a grin. "I didn't know you liked this kind of music, Dad."

He smiles heavily, cranes his neck, and pushes on his arm, deciding not to let her in on the symbolism of the song. "I've always liked that song. That's all."

Alexis chuckles amusingly and shakes her head. "You should turn on Buckethead. He just released a new pike album yesterday that's pretty good."

Rick keeps his heavy smile in place, trying his best to seem interested in his daughter trying out her interests on her father. He remembers having the time of his life playing with her when she was a little girl, playing house, having tea parties, and eventually graduating onto pretending he was the Stormtrooper and she was Princess Leia to play laser tag. Their song continues and Rick feels his heart tug as he hears it again, leaning back against the edge of his desk, that now faces away from the living room and against the wall in this world.

He remembers specifically tailoring his office decor so he could work at his desk while keeping an eagle's eye on his little girl when he was put in charge, or took control, over the entirety of her infancy. In this world, with the desk facing the wall, it's almost as if this world's Rick Castle tailored his office to shut out everybody. To turn his back on a world that left him behind.

"Here," Alexis breaks him out of his thoughts by presenting the plate to him. "I made you some lunch."

Rick's heart swells and he shoves off the desk, "Aww," he coos honestly, taking the plate of a roast beef and salami sandwich with a handful of Layes chips next to it. "Thank you, sweetie. You didn't have to do that." He says, reacting mostly on instinct and leaning forward, pressing a loving, thankful kiss to her cheek.

Alexis lights up at the fatherly affection. Whatever is going on with him, she loves him being like this. This is the dad she knew growing up, the dad that played with her and would carry her on his shoulders through Coney Island on weekends after she brought back a perfect score on a test in school. The last time he showed anything close to this was at her high school graduation. It wasn't a big deal for her. She barely graduated out of Marlowe Prep, but he was still proud of her.

Rick sets the plate down to his desk and leans back against it, taking up the sandwich with his one useful arm. "So," she nervously begins, "have any luck finding the artifact?"

He's brought back to the grim reality, but plays it off as much as he can for her sake. "I found it," he asks over his sandwich, "but I couldn't get it to work." He minces his words.

"Is there some trick to it? It's supposed to grant you what you desire most, right?" Alexis asks, crossing her arms.

"It's supposed to." He says just before taking another bite. "But it was uh..." he continues, eying a piece of salami about to fall out and busies himself with grabbing it up with his teeth and sucking it into his mouth, "damaged when I was shot."

"Damaged?" She asks, knowing when he's not telling her the whole truth. Her senses have become very acute to his vocal tells when he's playing something off. Over the years, it's become her knowing when he's telling her he doesn't need any help and he's just fine, even though she knows he's really telling her he just wants to wallow in the hell of his own making. "How was it damaged?"

"Suffice it to say," he starts before popping the last of the sandwich in his mouth and brushing his hands off on his stomach, "I'm stuck here for the time being so..." he pauses to swallow and move over to his laptop, "I'm at a dead end until I can find another way home. Maybe," he shrugs sideways as he carries his laptop over to his desk, "try and get my hands on a genie's lamp or something."

Alexis nods and crosses her arms despondently. She's trying her best to humor him, maybe getting caught up in this wild, fantastic, goose chase for some made up MacGuffin he's created. But it's given her her dad back. If she has to placate him a bit and play into the delusions, she'll do it. "So," she begins nervously, "this woman, this... police captain-"

"Beckett, sweetie," he clarifies for her as he hunts and pecks on his keyboard with one hand.

"Beckett," she parrots, digging the ball of her foot into the rug, "she must have been pretty special."

Her tone sets off bells in his head, a fine-tuned mechanism from years of fatherhood, and some of marriage, to know when there's some deeper issue festering. Rick turns to look over his shoulder with worry knitted into his brow. He forgets his research on his laptop and turns to face his daughter, who's standing at the threshold to the office in a black long sleeved t-shirt and black yoga pants. "She's the love of my life." He answers softly.

Alexis nods and looks away from him. "Really? I never thought I'd hear you describe another woman like that." Rick chuckles to himself. "I mean, you still complain about having to write Gina's alimony checks every time I visit." She says casually.

But Rick's features harden and his stomach flops. "She's _still _coming after me for that?!" He spits, surprising his daughter. Rick pushes out a hard, angry huff, resembling a charging bull, as he takes a step in the other direction. "I thought we had that settled after we broke up the last time."

Alexis is confused but decides to try and remind him anyway. "Remember? She never really forgave you killing off Derrick Storm and when you couldn't get past your block, Black Pawn started to go under."

Rick stops dead and whips around to face his daughter. "Black Pawn went out of business?" He asks in a weak voice.

Alexis chuckles nervously and tightens her crossed arms over herself. "You were their star writer, Dad. When you stopped writing, they stopped publishing. Last I heard, Gina's having trouble finding work to satiate her... expensive appetites. No one will touch her after publishing your new book."

Rick pushes out a ragged breath, drained of strength. He clenches his jaw shut and leans back against the corner of his desk. "I used to host a Christmas party there every year."

Alexis smiles in remembrance. "I remember. You used to dress up as Santa and buy toys for everyone's kids."

Rick breathes a cold breath out through his nostrils and grips the edge of his desk with his one good hand, the other laying limply in the sling around his neck.

"Dad," Alexis tries, "have you ever thought of... giving _this _world's Beckett a shot?"

He looks up to her, gauging her sincerity for a moment.

"I mean," she continues on a nervous chuckle, "you took a bullet for her, after all."

But Rick is already shaking his head. "No, Alexis, you don't understand." He says, looking over to her with desperate eyes. "It took me _years_... to even get her to notice that I was standing right in front of her. Getting her to fall for me was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do. And I have to believe that somewhere, _my _Kate Beckett is waiting for me and I can't betray her by giving up on that."

Her brow pinches slightly and she shifts her weight, trying her best to follow his thinking. "So-" she hesitates, "you're afraid of cheating on her... with her."

"Well," he starts, looking away and softening his expression, "I'd like to think it's a bit more three dimensional than that but...I've already abandoned her once, Alexis. I have to try. I can't let a minor setback stop me from finding a way back to her." He explains with an encouraged and determined smile. He takes a pause to shove off the edge of the desk and reaches up, putting a hand on his daughter's arm. "I'll find a way back to her, sweetie."

Alexis keeps her smile in place for his sake and waits until his hand falls off her shoulder and he turns around to let her emotions force the words out. "And to your Alexis." She mutters, letting her head fall.

Rick stops and turns back around quickly. So that's what this was about. "Is that what this about, sweetie?" He asks in as much a caring voice as he can and takes a step forward. "You're worried about me leaving?"

Alexis looks back up to her dad, knowing she has her emotions on full display. "To be honest, Dad, this whole thing sounds insane to me but... you show up at home one day and I finally have my dad back." She shrugs with her arms still crossed protectively. "My _real _dad, the one I grew up with. Now, I don't really believe any of this... alternate universe, timeline changing stuff but I finally get my dad back and all you want to do is find a way back to your own Alexis."

"Hey," Rick says softly and puts his arm around her, pulling her into his side. He pauses and feels his daughter press herself into his side, with him petting her back caringly. "I don't care what universe I'm in, Alexis. Because there is one thing that no matter of quantum mechanics or space-time theory can change and that is..." he says, putting his hand on her face and smiling, "you will always be my daughter."

It's felt like a lifetime since she's felt this genuine fatherly affection from him. She's grown to resent him for giving up on life the way he did, knowing what a great dad he was to her growing up. Something changed in him, or maybe something changed in the world and got him to wake up, but she needs this version of him to stick around. Overwhelmed, Alexis uncrosses her arms and puts them around his chest, hugging her father tightly. "I love you, Dad."

Rick smiles and rests his head down onto his daughter's hair. "I love you too, Alexis." He says back. "But even if I were to go after this world's Kate Beckett, her walls are more fortified than ever. It'd take me forever to get through to her."

* * *

They've sat in complete silence since the formality of a greeting was out of the way. She could really use some more pain killers. She ran out of Aleve and hasn't gotten the chance to get more. This headache only seems to be getting worse and now, she's starting to lose sleep because she just doesn't want to dream anymore.

She can't stand getting those... feelings.

Back sitting in this deep armchair across from a therapist she's only met with once, she's nervously twisting her heel in between the fibers of the scratchy carpet. "Do you mind if I take my heels off?" She asks in a small voice.

Burke smiles softly and waves the end of his ballpoint at her while adjusting the notepad on his crossed legs. "Whatever you need to feel comfortable, Kate."

She musters up a thankful smile and toes her four-inch heels off her feet and slips her legs underneath her, settling deep back into the chair and putting her hands down into her lap. When she looks up, all she notices now is the notepad on his lap. "Could you lose the notepad, please?" She asks him in a much more firm voice.

Burke's eyes flick between the notepad and his patient.

"I feel like you're studying me and I'd... prefer if this were to remain as off the record as it can."

Dr. Burke nods slowly and takes the notepad by the top and sets it down to the floor, setting the pen on top, then coming back to fold his hands in his lap. "So, I take it you've had more dreams."

Beckett nods only once and looks out the blinds covering the window, her head listing off slightly at the weight of her headache vicing itself around her skull. "I found out something." She starts, wanting to cut to the meat of the matter. "About him, about..." she trails off, looking down at her lap, "what he thinks I am to him."

"You mean this writer, Richard Castle?" She nods in response, still not meeting his eyes. "So all the dreams are still about him."

"About us." She says pointedly, finally giving him her eyes. "A couple days ago, I found him in evidence storage looking for the box from our last case. The only thing in there besides case files was this stone disk that he was holding when he was shot. But I decided to confront him about just who he thinks I am in this delusion of his and he told me." She says, nodding her head and letting her fear shine in her eyes. "And now... I need to know that I'm just going insane."

Burke's brow pinches slightly. "What exactly did he say?"

"He said that I was his fiance." She says softly, her voice trembling and weak. "I know that it sounds crazy because that's what I told him, but then..." she trails off, recalling every word he said to her.

"Then what?" Burke encourages her to continue.

"Doctor," she says desperately, unfolding her legs and leaning forward on her elbows, "he - _knows _\- things. Things about me that I've _never _told to anyone. Things that..." she has to stop and look back out the window, feeling her eyes burn. "That I'd only ever want the man I want it to work with to know." She tells him, grabbing for the necklace hanging underneath her pale green blouse. "There's no _possible _way that he could know these things if I didn't tell him."

Burke's eyes cloud with disbelief and he leans back further in his chair a bit. "What exactly did he tell you, Kate?"

She lets out a ragged breath and tosses herself back in the chair, pulling on leg up to her chest and wrapping her arms around it. "He knew about this." She says, pulling out the chain that holds the ring. "It was my mother's. I promised myself after she was murdered that I'd wear it until the day I put her killer behind bars." She explains, looking down at the ring that's become a lot heavier over the years. It's a weight she's become accustomed to. Much like the hole in her heart that her mother left behind, that she walled off just like he said.

"And..." Burke starts for her, pointing at the ring with a finger from his clasped hands, "I take it since you still wear it, that-"

"I never solved it." She shakes her head and puts the ring back underneath her blouse. "That's why I've been... questioning whether or not I'm truly meant for this job or not a lot lately. I'm starting to realize just how much I've questioned myself over the years. How many times I've... screwed up because I knew I couldn't handle it otherwise."

Burke senses in her words she has something on her mind, some deeper issue that she wants to discuss without just blurting it out. "You're speaking of a specific instance?"

Beckett sniffs and rests her mouth against her fist, looking back out the windows. "A few years ago, we caught a case involving this venture capitalist who was poisoned at a restaurant. The wait staff had mixed up the orders so the intended target was still alive and we had to bring him into protective custody." She shakes her head as tears well up in her eyes. "I didn't want to admit at the time that I... got caught up in some wild, romantic fantasy of him actually wanting something more when I slept with him. He said all the right things, got me to let my guard down and I just... fantasized about him whisking me away and changing my life forever." The tears feel cold as they run down her face, wanting to rip some part of her out, feeling deserving of the pain it would cause her. "I can tell myself now that it didn't mean anything but... in the moment... I thought he was going to give me something more."

Burke stays silent and lets her get out what she needs out.

"He didn't even show up to the precinct after we'd caught the killer. There was no connection, no... feeling, no meaning. I felt like a toy. But-" she cuts herself off, biting her lip as more tears well up in her eyes, flickers of her dreams starting to float into parts of her like bandages, healing her with memories that she's never had before.

"But?" Burke protests her stopping.

"You know," she starts, taking her hand off her mouth and grabbing onto her other leg, pulling at it, "in these dreams I have... there's never any context to them. I don't know how she feels what she feels, or _why _she feels what she feels for him. But I know _what _she feels for him. I can remember in the moment what she's thinking in these dreams. And this person, whoever this woman is that this guy proposed to... I know that she loves him with all of her heart."

Burke's eyes twinge a bit at the sincerity of her claims.

"I can remember her thinking to herself just how much this guy means to her, because of all the work she did to be with him. Every time I've had a dream, I can always remember her thinking to herself just how much real effort she put in for him. And she knows without a doubt that he loves her. She knows what they have is real." She says painfully, swatting at the tracks of her tears running down her face, hiding her expression by looking down into her lap. "But me? I can only remember feeling one thing when I have these dreams."

Burke pauses, not sure whether to take the fact she's separating these two personas as a good thing or not. "And... what is that?"

Beckett looks back up to him with a darkness emptying her eyes. "I'm jealous." She admits before her bottom lip starts to quiver, giving her away. "Why does she get to have that and not me?" She demands. "What did I do wrong that I don't get to have what she has?"

Burke sighs in a low breath. This is going to take a while.

"How was she able to fall in love and not me?"

* * *

_A/N: Comeback chapter! What'd ya think? :D_

_P.S: Yes, I only listen to Buckethead, especially when I write. I'll start listening a lot more, get me to write more. :)_


	8. Chapter 8

He's always tried to keep himself in good shape. Goes to the gym downstairs of his building a few times a week, lifts weights and all the usual stuff. He's never been one for intense cardio, but can go for a jog when he has to. He's always been mindful of his carb intake, maybe indulges in pasta too many times simply because a case ran late and it's easy to make a few more times during the week than he should.

But it's never been for vanity's sake.

He just hates doctors.

The visit to the doctor's office didn't take long, but felt like more time out of his day than he was willing to give. His shoulder is still a numbed rubber block of muscle thanks to the painkillers, and according to the doctor, he's not really due to physical therapy for another few weeks.

But he doesn't plan on being stuck in this hell hole of a universe for that long. He'll find a way back home if he has to die to get there. Maybe that's what this is. Maybe hell is just a life that the devil knows you'll hate living for the rest of eternity. What's worse, he knows he got himself sent here to this purgatory. Because of his doubts and his misgivings. It's always been the monkey on his back, the cloud of doubt and worry of not living up to the ever-changing expectations of the people he cares about.

It's another cold, dreary day in the streets of the city as time crawls toward eleven in the morning. He needs to get his prescription filled and he hates having to take drugs. If they didn't actually help, it would be worth the pain to stop taking them. But they help too much to give them up for now.

Rick looks around the streets as pedestrians scurry around him. He wants to go home.

To his real home... home to her.

His heart feels like it's crumbling every time his heel rolls against the cracks in the sidewalk. He misses her so much, her smile, the gleam in her eyes, her fingers in his hair and the pads of her fingers on his stubble in the morning, the worn smell of her hair in his nose when he wakes up with her perfectly slender figured body in his arms and his nose buried in her hair. He misses how he'd always push her hair out of her face with his nose and chin to dust a kiss onto her cheek before slipping back to sleep unnoticed.

With a weak heart and even weaker backbone, he looks up from the sidewalk and sees a building at the end of the block he's walking down.

It's not his Kate.

But it's still _a _Kate.

He slips in the main lobby unnoticed by the uniforms and the secretaries and heads to the elevator, his finger finding the number three on the panel like a light switch in a room he's entered thousands of times. His chest expands cautiously with an empty feeling air filling his lungs as he rides the elevator up. After stepping off, his hands tucked casually into his dark denims over a dark blue jacket and a purple dress shirt, he stops and looks around the bullpen.

They didn't fall in love at the loft, or her apartment, or at Remy's. Those places are special to them both, sure. But this, that desk right over there and the chair that's nowhere to be seen in this universe's Twelfth precinct is where they fell in love.

Rick breathes a heavy sigh and strolls into the bullpen, seeing Ryan and Esposito buried in paperwork at their desks, then looks ahead to see the door to the Captain's office cracked. He always thought she'd have an open door policy at her precinct if she ever became Captain, not a boss but a leader. A benevolent presence but strong and fierce where it counted.

But that would be his Kate Beckett if she ever became Captain in his world.

Who knows what this Kate Beckett is like as boss.

He knows it's out of weakness, an addict to a sort of drug. But he's willing to admit he's a junkie in need of some sort of fix if it means getting the strength to find his way back home. He casually walks into the bullpen, rounding the barrier and eyeing the Captain's office with a tingle in his fingers and a shiver in his spine when he sees a shadow move along the wall opposite where the desk would be.

But as he's just passing the door to the kitchen, a figure steps out from around the corner of the opposite hallway that makes every light, cautious feeling vanish. With a well-practiced smile and a pressed suit, he looks around Twelfth precinct's homicide division, as if he's sizing up a new home.

Rick slows to a stop just outside the door to the conference room, seeing the door to the Captain's office open out of the fringe of his vision while the politician looks toward the door with a friendly smile and quickly extends his hand to her.

"Captain Beckett," he greets her. The lining of Rick's pockets is ready to tear, his fists balled up as tight as he can get them and the only thing keeping them from the man's jaw are the pockets themselves. "I'm glad we finally got this arranged."

The brightness of her soft smile momentarily breaks him out of his blinding rage and unlocks his soul. "It's no trouble, Senator."

His breath catches and a stomach-churning realization floods over him. She has no clue who he really is.

"Well, I'm always happy to-" the senator takes a pause when he finally notices Rick's dark, intense glare boring directly into him, "-to stand with New York's finest." He finishes and smiles his political smile back toward her after giving Rick only a second's attention.

She noticed the shift and looks over her shoulder. Seemingly coming out of nowhere, he's standing with his broad shoulders squared off and his jaw clenched tightly. She can practically hear his teeth grinding from here. But still, she's sleep-deprived and wearing too much makeup to cover it up just because she can't stand to have another dream of being with him again. It's getting to be every night.

Even so, seeing him makes her heart flutter... uncomfortably. "R..." she stops herself from saying it, "Mr. Castle." She says with her hands clasped over her light blue pencil skirt.

Rick's lips force themselves into a casual smirk and he looks toward her, softening his eyes as much as he can in the situation. He decides to stay silent, letting the situation play itself out.

He keeps his eyes on her as she turns back to the senator, then eyeing the floor between his shoes. "Senator Bracken," she starts, completely naive, "this is Richard Castle. He helped us solve a case recently."

Bracken looks over to Rick with his polished smile and extends his hand to him. "Richard Castle the novelist?" He asks as Rick peels his hand from his pocket.

After gritting his teeth, Rick jabs his hand into the senator's palm, shaking it with unintended force. "On my better days."

"Ooo..." the senator grimaces, dipping his shoulder and trying to pull his hand away, "quite a grip for a writer."

"I work out." He says in a soft voice as he takes his hand back and puts it into his pocket.

"You know, Mr. Castle, you ever consider getting into politics? We sure could use more native New Yorker's like yourself representing the city." Bracken says, crossing his arms and narrowing his eyes with a grin.

"Me?" Rick plays along, shaking his head and waving his hand. "Oh, I could never do that." He says, a fire snapping like an accidental fireworks display in his stomach. "Lord knows I have enough skeletons in my closet. And you never know..." he says, raising his brow before looking straight into the senator's eyes, "just which ones someone might dig up."

The senator's expression blanks aside from a slight pinch in his brow.

"Umm..." Kate makes herself known between the two and leans forward. "Would you like to speak in my office, Senator?" She offers, lifting her hand up and stepping to the side.

Bracken looks over to the Captain, his well-polished smile returning effortlessly. "That'd be great."

Bracken makes his way inside. Kate, standing at the door to her office, looks over to Rick, whose eyes have followed the Senator. "I'll just be a few minutes, okay?" She tells him, wanting to keep him around.

His eyes snap back to her, but his stern expression doesn't soften. He stares at her for a moment darkly before his soft voice is speaking. "Be careful." Is all he can say to her.

Kate rolls her eyes and scoffs, true to the real Kate Beckett, even across universal lines. "It's a campaign stop, Mr. Castle." She answers back before stepping inside and closing the door behind her. "So," she starts, seeing the senator over by the window, who turns around at the sound of her voice, "I hope the Twelfth precinct live up to standards since the last time you came by."

"Well," he chuckles as the Captain makes her way around to her desk, brushing her skirt down and taking her seat, "it's nice to not have a credible death threat on my head this time. That's for sure."

Kate chuckles. "I'm just glad we got the guy."

Bracken leans back in his chair and crosses his legs, leaning against the arm of the chair on the other side of her desk. "You'd just made Leitenant back then, right?"

She nods, folding her hands together. "Under Captain Gates, yes."

Bracken smiles and wags his finger at her. "I've read up on you, Captain Beckett."

Kate scoffs to herself slightly. "I didn't realize I worth doing any research, Senator."

Bracken lifts his brow and smiles at her. "Youngest to not only make detective in the history of the NYPD, but also youngest to make Captain."

She cranes her neck slightly. She's heard it before. From Gates, from the Commissioner... from Vaughn. A way to flatter her for more than her looks, and in the latter's case, get her to think he sees her as more than a walking pleasure toy.

She knows that she could do more, do better. But for now, she grits her teeth and lets the compliment go by. "You make your city proud, Captain Beckett."

She looks back up to the politician and forces a smile. "Thank you, Senator."

"Which," he starts and leans forward on his elbows, speaking in a lowered tone, "is why I'm hoping we could help each other out."

Her heart tightens around her lungs for a moment at the sudden shift in the conversation. "I'm sorry?"

"Well, as well you know, I announced my candidacy for President last year... and an endorsement from the youngest officer to ever make Captain of the nation's top police force would go a long way."

She feels cold. Like she's already losing ground somehow. "I'm sorry, Senator, but the NYPD has to remain politically neutral."

"Captain," he chuckles, expecting her answer, "politics is about deal-making. It's about knowing when to give up ground and when to offer some up. I'm prepared, Captain, to..." he trails off, leaning back in his chair and unbuttoning his suit jacket, "make a substantial increase to the NYPD's discretionary budget."

"You're..." she stops, feeling weak, "what you're saying is-"

"What I'm saying, Captain," Bracken stops her with a smile, "is I'd like to know that I have my home states police force looking out for me, and in return..." he trails off again, eyeing her again with a grin, "I'll look out for you."

He's trying to buy her off. It would be easy to accept. What could go wrong, after all? She goes in front of a few cameras, reads a few lines, and he leaves her alone.

With her breath lodged in her throat and her heart palpitating, feeling like the smallest thing in the world, she chokes on her words. "Do I have your support, Captain Beckett?" He asks her again.

She finally looks out the window of her office and into the bullpen and sees him, standing near the interrogation room, looking straight at her with the same stern glare she left him with.

_My Kate Beckett would never compromise. _

Kate smiles softly, staring through her blinds at him, honestly more thankful than she thought she could ever be for a person, and looks back over to the politician, who's smiling at her expectantly. "If you'd like to make a donation to the NYPD, Senator Bracken, you can go to NYC police foundation dot org, forward slash donate." She rattles off calmly.

The senator's smile fades quickly.

"My job as Captain of this precinct is to uphold the law and to put people who break that law behind bars," she says, jamming her finger into the center of her oak desk, "no matter who breaks it. And to do that, this precinct will remain untainted by political foot rubbing. Now, Senator, I appreciate your interest in my precinct, but I suggest you leave before the Enquire gets a tip of a Senator attempting to buy off a Captain of the NYPD."

Bracken's eyes break away from her coldly and he slowly stands up, pressing against the arms of the chair. Wordlessly, he makes for the door and pushes it open. Kate slowly follows him out into the bullpen with her hands calmly clasped over her pencil skirt, a small, proud smile on her face as the Senator slowly turns around to make a public farewell to the Captain for appearances.

He smiles his practiced politician smile to her and lifts his hand to her. Kate looks passed him to see Castle standing right where he was, leaning against the door jam of the observation room.

"It was a lovely visit, Captain." He says to her, shaking her hand. "We'll have to do it again."

She smiles and takes her hand back. "I'm a busy person, but my door's always open, Senator."

He nods at her, briefly looking over his shoulder to Rick, who's still glaring darkly at the senator, and then quickly departs out of the bullpen toward the elevator. She smiles much more effortlessly and naturally when she looks up to Castle, giving him a silent cue to join her.

"When you said I should come visit you more, I kind of had it going as just us in my head." He tells her, the dark, rich timber in his voice making her tremble, recalling the way his voice feels against her... against his Kate's skin.

She smiles and looks over her shoulder, seeing the doors shut on the elevator. "Just politics, Mr. Castle." She tells him, looking back toward him. "Part of the job."

He nods, "Well, you handled yourself well, I'm sure."

Her smile brightens of its own accord and she cranes her neck, the hair in her ponytail falling down her shoulder. "Well, it's good to see you again," She tells him, looking back up to him with a soft smile, until she checks the clock. Her heart sinks to her feet when she sees the time. "But..." she stutters, "I wasn't kidding when I said I'm a busy person. I'm late for a meeting." She tells him.

Disheartened, Rick nods sadly to himself and commits to his fate, staying put as she reaches through her door and grabs a black bag, draping it over her shoulder.

"Thanks again for stopping by, Mr. Castle." She says with another smile and rushes toward the elevator.

"My pleasure," he says quietly as she retreats out of the bullpen.

Beckett adjusts the bag on her shoulder, reaching inside to clutch the evidence bag tightly, rubbing the grooves and indentations on the artifact with her thumb through the plastic while double-checking the address on her phone of the lead she tracked down after another all-nighter to avoid sleeping and deal with her headache. Professor Mansfield, home office address shows he's about twenty blocks away.

She slips her phone back into the inside pocket of her jacket and feels her headache swell again when she rubs the artifact in her bag again.

This is a lead made out of desperation. She knows that.

But that's what she is. She's desperate for answers to questions that just simply can't be asked with any seriousness behind the claims. But she's out of explanations. So, clutching the artifact in her bag, and pinching her forehead to wrangle in her headache, she steps onto the elevator.

* * *

It was a fruitless detour.

He got to see her make friends with the person who murdered her mother, whom is still a free man and is still running for President, all before she ran out of the precinct after giving him a few lines of conversation. God, he wants to go home. At this point, he'd settle for this world's home.

But he needs to pick up his prescription and this drugstore is the closest place. So, dragging his feet through the sliding doors, the bell chimes over his head and he starts to make his way back toward the pharmacy. Passing the toothpaste and the shampoo, he hears something clatter against the floor, but pays it no mind until he's at the counter of the pharmacy. He looks up to the clerk with a dead expression. "Richard Castle."

The clerk nods and silently moves back into the shelves.

A pair of footsteps quicken up behind him and an out of breath voice is tapping him on his shoulder.

He turns and sees a very familiar-looking redhead looking wide-eyed at him. She seems familiar, but can't for the life of him place her. "Yes?"

"It's really you."

His brow pinches curiously. "Come again?"

"I..." she breathes a bright sigh and smiles, "I can't believe it. It's really you. When she came in last week I thought I was just going crazy, but now that you're here, I know it was true."

Rick's eyes narrow and he shifts his weight. "I'm sorry, do I know you?"

"Penny Marchand, my grandmother was-"

"Vivian Marchand." Rick finishes for her, the pieces in his brain flying together in a flash. "Penny!"

"I have something to tell you. It's really important." She tells him.

Vivian was the psychic, this is it. He knows it. This is the lifeline he was praying for! "Yes! Yes, anything!"

"Pumpkins."

Rick stares at her. "Pumpkins?"

"Yes, pumpkins. Pumpkins will send you home. Pumpkins." She smiles at him again breathlessly.

Without another word, Penny turns down an aisle of the store and disappears, while Rick is digging out his phone and holding down the home button. "Where's the nearest place I can buy pumpkins?"

* * *

_A/N: Thought I forgot about Penny, didn't you! _


	9. Chapter 9

She knows that whiff anywhere, as well as she knows the taste of cocaine from the blade of a pocket knife. His neighbors probably couldn't care less to report him. Buildings like this, these upper-scale buildings in Soho are known for being centers of all seven deadly sins. Over the years, pot has gone the way of the homeless vagrant's bottle, into a paper bag to keep the police 'unaware'.

Beckett twists the strap of her shoulder bag nervously, her heart palpitating inside of her throat, before digging inside to make sure the evidence bag is still inside. She pushes out a sigh and taps her knuckles against the door.

After a moment with no response or sound of movement, she starts. "Professor Mansfield?" She calls out from the hallway. "Craig Mansfield, NYPD, open up!" She calls out again, her voice blunt with impatience.

She's been trying to make sense of something shouldn't be made sense of, which led her to the Incan artifact in her bag, and a disgraced professor of early human civilizations, who runs a small internet blog about historical conspiracy theories that boasts a very loyal and vocal cult-like online following. In any normal investigation, she'd write this guy off as a complete loon.

But she's desperate.

She can't feel being chipped away like this. She's losing sleep, can't keep food down, her headache is immune to any sort of over the counter painkillers. She was on the verge of booking an appointment for an MRI just to make sure she doesn't have some sort of concussion this morning before Senator Bracken's visit. She's afraid to go to sleep now. She can't have any more dreams. It's too painful.

Because it's too real. And if what she's feeling is real...

No, they can't be real. This wouldn't be happening. She's just fine the way she is. "Professor Mansfield!" She calls out again from the hallway.

The knob turns and Beckett hardens herself. The door opens to a short, thin man with grey hair and a light bald spot on the top of his head, a dark green sweater vest over a pale blue loose fitting button-up shirt and dark brown slacks. The professor adjusts his glasses and blinks up at her. "Y-yes?" He asks her.

"Professor Craig Mansfield," Beckett starts and pulls out a print out of the article she found from her bag and unfolds it, "you wrote a paper two years ago about an artifact dating back to the Incan empire."

"And?" He impatiently snaps, leaning back with a glazed look, hanging his hands loosely from his pockets.

"I need you to tell me everything you know about it." She demands sternly.

Mansfield scoffs, rolling his eyes with a wide motion of his head and turns back into his apartment. "Madam, everything I know about that stubbornsum codpiece is in my paper already." He waves his hand back at her.

"It's Captain, Professor." She corrects him frustratingly, following him inside the threshold of his apartment, getting smacked in the face by a wave of air freshener wafting in the air to try and pathetically mask the aroma of the marijuana. "And your paper was incomplete."

The professor turns to her over his shoulder with a lift in one of his brows. "What on Earth do you mean? I spent six months worth of research into that paper."

"Like where does it come from?" She asks rapidly, following him through the living room of his apartment behind him. Mansfield doesn't slow down, unphased by her question. "Tell me what this thing is," she demands again, digging the artifact, wrapped in an evidence bag, out of the bag on her shoulder and holding it up to him, "and don't give me any mystical crap!" She snaps, waving the bag to him.

When Mansfield looks over his shoulder to the emotional woman standing in his apartment, clutching a large evidence bag in her hand, he turns into a ghost as his skin drains of all color and his expression becomes a void.

Quickly, he jumps over to her and snatches the evidence bag with the broken halves of the artifact inside out of her hand, bringing it close to his face, hunching over and becoming greedy with the artifact as he studies it. "It's real." He murmurs.

Beckett stands with her nails nervously digging into her palms and her thumbs rubbing nervous circles on the sides of her hands. This thing can't be what the paper claims it is. It's not possible by any stretch of the imagination. A man, her favorite author, somehow living a life where they'd met and fallen in love, gotten engaged, spent all that time together learning each other. A solace ending to this would be her just losing her sanity, her once firm grip on reality.

Because now, she doesn't know which reality seems the most real to her.

"I can't believe it." He says breathlessly, his thumbs petting the artifact through the bag. "Oh, good lord." He starts and his posture tightens in a flash. "That means... oh, good _lord!" _He snaps, dropping the artifact like a hot stone onto the carpet of his apartment. "He was telling the truth. He used it."

"Who was telling the truth?" She tries, but fails as Professor Mansfield clutches at the sides of his hair and staggers deeper into his home office, muttering to himself. "Professor, someone else came to you about this thing, didn't they?" She makes an attempt, following him, but doesn't get an answer.

"Fate of the entire world, I thought it was just the cannabis I'd been smoking. But this-this-this just can't be. When he said he used it- oh, good lord, he's put the natural course of history at risk. Has he any _idea _what amount of damage he's done?! _Billions _of lives, you complete fool!" He seethes to himself, stomping around his apartment madly.

"Professor Mansfield!" She spits from the archway between the living room and his office. She finally gets his attention, seeing her standing square-shouldered, stone-faced, her fists balled up tightly. "Tell me... what the hell is going on." She warns him in a low, overbearing voice. "Now."

He lets out a short huff before taking a quick step toward her. "Captain," he starts, picking up the evidence bag by his feet, "this trinket has been used by humans to alter the very course of history as we know it, disturbing the very _delicate _equilibrium of natural events that are meant to take place. This artifact spent thousands of years fulfilling the deepest desires of the most ambitious and granting them the power they sought. The fact that one man used it on _accident _to grant himself some breakup wish is either a _tremendous _miracle... or the biggest mistake that this timeline has ever seen."

Beckett's throat closes at the mention of a man, her blood thickening in her veins. "The man," she says in a shakingly nervous voice, "who you said used this, who was he?" She asks, her heart thumping wildly.

"I-I don't know, some writer and his daughter." He says with a wave of his hand. "An inconsequential nobody who somehow got ahold of the power of the divine."

She reaches into her bag again blindly and pulls out her paperback copy of Storm Season, showing his handsome portrait on the back. "Was this him?"

Mansfield looks at the picture on the back of the book, adjusting his glasses by the arm and squinting. "Yes, that's him. And now, if you'll excuse me," he starts quickly, moving backward into his apartment, "I have to prepare for the inevitable backlash for tampering with the natural order of things." He hisses in a rushed voice and moves back over to the table next to the open window.

"Professor!" She snaps again, her eyes burning. This _can't _be real. He stops a few feet away from the table, looking back at her with wide eyes. "Two weeks ago, I had a man I've never met before step in front of a bullet for me without a _single _ounce of hesitation or regret. And now, I can't go to sleep without having some of the most _vivid _dreams I've ever had of us making love. Now, I need you to explain to me how a complete stranger knows things about me that my own dad doesn't know about and tell me that _this," _she snags the bag from him, shoving it to his face, "isn't what you say it is."

It's then that the professor's eyes slowly start to widen with a realization. "It's you." He says, pointing a weak finger at her. All she does is feel her lips tremble and her chest convulse. "You're the woman he used it for, aren't you? The fiance he wished to never have met."

She can't help the feeling of her heart getting stomped on. The painful feeling that even in another life with emotions running as deep as the other her's, as wholeheartedly as she feels the other her loves him, they're doomed to fail. Was she right in this life and is just destined to quarantine herself? That she's not meant to have that kind of love in her life?

"Professor Mansfield," she starts in a much weaker voice, "please tell me what's going on here."

The man sucks at his teeth and looks away in impatience. "What is it you want to hear, Madam?"

"I want you to tell me that I'm just going crazy."

She professor belts out a loud chuckle and leans his head back. "Crazy, Captain? 1973." He says to her.

"What?" She demands.

"Doctor David Rosenhan? The Thud Experiment? In 1973, decided to test the modern psychiatric field by conducting an experiment in which he sent healthy individuals to twelve different hospitals in five different states throughout the US, all claiming to have been hearing a single sound, thud. All 118 individuals were confined to the hospitals to which they were sent, never once being detected as faking. The only people to detect that these pseudopatients were faking were the patients themselves. After Doctor Rosenhan made his experiment public, the industry was deeply embarrassed."

"Professor," Beckett attempts to stop him, "what does this have to do with anything?"

"A while later, the hospitals challenged Rosenhan to perform the experiment again, and he did. A month later, they had come out claiming to have found over one thousand patients who had been faking their symptoms but only this time... Rosenhan had indeed not sent any patients at all. Thus the history of mental health moving from psychological treatment to pharmaceutical."

"Professor, what the _hell _is the point in all of this?" She demands through clenched teeth.

"The _point, _Madam, is to take great care before you decide to call yourself crazy."

"Then what am I suppose to do?" She asks, her will weak. "I-it's like..." she stammers, "it feels like I'm losing myself to something I didn't even understand."

"U-uh-uh..." the professor stammers, shaking his finger in the air in front of him and pacing away from her, clutching the bag with the artifact inside with his hand. The apartment is silent for a moment before he turns back around. "A string."

Fed up, Beckett blinks. "A string..."

"Reusing the analogy I used on your friend, imagine the natural course of history being a string. This artifact," he says, holding the bag up to her, "just plucked that string and we have yet to feel the vibrations."

"Professor, this guy can't be who he says he is." She tries, defending the notion only to herself, which is a losing battle. "These dreams I'm having can't be... what, memories from my time with him? If this thing changed our history, how am I getting dreams of us?"

"Because, madam, it's the way things are supposed to be. The string in its natural state, is at rest. The river, left free to flow, is easy to swim in, but put a few rocks in the way, it suddenly becomes life-threateningly dangerous. When that man used this artifact to change your history, he changed the very flow of that river. What you're experiencing is the vibrations of the string being plucked. These... these dreams are probably being triggered by places familiar to you in both timelines, or certain things you two shared."

Her eyes, wide and uncertain, drift off and stare out into space.

Her first dream, her teasing him with her Nebula Nine outfit and him in that long, sexy coat... she had that dream after she fell asleep on the couch watching Nebula Nine. The dream of them in evidence lock-up... he said to her that morning that he'd found that place on her neck just below her ear that makes her jump with ecstasy. The dream of them making love in the Hampton's, her lighting the candles before steamrolling herself on top of him... she had lit a candle to try and read for the night.

The more she draws the connections, the more disbelief washes away.

Her eyes flick back up to the professor, who's staring at her with gritted teeth. "How do I stop it?"

He chuckles darkly. "Stop it? Captain, you're dealing with the power of the _gods _here!" He says, shaking the bag at her.

"Professor, I _can't _go on living like this!" She cries.

"Then use it!" He fires back. "We're facing end times here, Captain. We're all entitled to a little selfishness. So think..." he says in a low voice, "this man says he knows things he couldn't possibly know about you? Well... there must be something you want."

Her heart warms, but hardens at the same time as she leans back, straightening her spine. Her hand clutches her ring over her blouse and she grits her teeth. "There is one thing."

* * *

Alexis opens the door home and steps inside with the bag of food resting on top of her forearm. She looks over the loft, not hearing anything, but noticing something off about the kitchen. "Dad?" She hollers, but gets nothing back and closes the door behind her.

She moves toward the kitchen, noticing that the island is completely covered with pumpkins, the dining table has four incredibly large pumpkins sitting on top, there's even a large box sitting just outside the kitchen, completely full of pumpkins, looking as if he stole the box from right outside of a grocery store. The counters along the back of the kitchen, even the stools at the island have pumpkins sitting in them.

After a minute, her dad's head pops out from underneath the island between two pumpkins. "Hey, sweetie."

"Uh..." she tries, looking over the situation. "I'm back with dinner, what..." she's at a loss for words.

"Hey," he says quickly, moving around the island, his phone in his hand, a credit card clutched in between two fingers and his arm safely in a sling for support, "something's wrong with this credit card. The bank said I maxed it out."

Alexis chuckles, setting the food down on the stairs. "Yeah, it has a five hundred dollar limit, Dad."

Rick's eyes widen and his anger boils over in a flash. "_Five hundred?!"_ He exclaims. He shakes his head and flicks the useless piece of plastic behind him into the sink. "She gets on my case for setting her's to five thousand and then gives me one that can barely pay for a cab ride?" He mutters to himself, looking over his phone.

"Dad, what's going on with all the pumpkins?" She asks, changing the subject.

"I got it from a reliable source that in order to send me home, I'm going to need a certain kind of fruit of the earth." He tells her with a proud smile, slapping his hand down onto the pumpkin sitting on the edge of the counter. "And it wasn't potatoes."

"So..." Alexis starts, not wanting to believe her dad's gone completely mental. She just got him back and she'll fight tooth and nail to keep him here and not get dragged off to some asylum. "Someone told you that pumpkins will send you home."

"Mmhmm," he says with a happy smirk and turns around, twisting the pumpkin his hand is on, inspecting it. "Ate a few pieces of pumpkin pie, carved a jack-o-lantern that looks like Abe Lincoln, and even found a place on my way home that was still selling pumpkin spice lattes and bought three of them. So..." he draws in a deep, chest filling breath, "I feel pretty good."

Alexis nods slowly and pries open the bag of takeout, deciding that if this is what he needs to fight for something and be her dad again, so be it.

And Rick watches pleasantly, feeling like everything is coming together and hopeful, as his phone rings in his hand. He swipes his thumb across the screen without looking. "Castle." He answers happily.

A short breath can be heard on the other end of the line. "Mr. Castle?" He recognizes her voice immediately.

His skin flushes nervously and his gulps. "Uh-Yes... Captain Beckett. A pleasant surprise to hear from you."

On the other end of the line, Beckett sits barefoot on her couch, twisting her necklace around in between her fingers. "Yeah..." she meanders around the point, "I was just wondering if you'd be willing to come down and talk about something. I-if that is, you're not busy with anything."

His brain is telling him no... but his heart, he misses her so damn much. "No, not at all. I can be down at the precinct in no time."

"Actually," she stops him as he's rounding the counter, taking quick notice of the disappointed look in his daughter's eyes. "I'm at home for the night, so..." she stammers, "would you be alright meeting me here? It's important."

Rick swallows nervously. "No, I don't mind."

On the other end, Beckett flashes a smile to herself, her heart feeling softened by him, but everything else wanting to ice over. "Thanks, I'll um... I'll text you the address?" She says, twisting the chain of her necklace around and pulling the ring up into her palm. This is finally it. What she's wanted, why she became a cop... she's finally getting it.

Rick nods to himself, "Sure."

"Thanks," she says and hangs up.

* * *

_A/N: Had planned on adding the next scene in this chapter, but also wanted to get the next dream in the same chapter as the next scene. And if I did that, it would have ran too long. Don't want to mess with the pace by giving you too much. Let me know, as always. And thanks for the continues ups and support for my writing. :)_


	10. Chapter 10

She texted the address a few seconds after he hung up the phone. It was a slap in the face from the reality of this universe that the number it came from was just her phone number with no picture, that she wasn't in his contacts. He had dozens, probably hundreds of pictures of her to choose from for her picture on his phone. Breathtakingly beautiful, awe-inspiringly gallant, soft and cuddly in bed, bright and happy, even some vulnerable and embarrassing.

He changes it every so often in his own world. The picture he was using last was of her in her pale white robe, her hair tied up in a messy bun on top of her head, her face naturally beautiful and free of make up, looking tired and unprepared for the day, standing at the end of the island in the kitchen, holding a coffee cup to her lips and looking over to the camera with wide, annoyingly surprised eyes.

Rick breathes a heavy, weighted sigh as he stops on the sidewalk, opposite her building.

The last time he saw this building intact was right before he saw a giant fireball consume it before his eyes. He remembers clearly feeling the shockwave from the explosion blow into his face and brush through his hair. In the moment, he didn't have time for anything else. It was the first time he felt something of a warrior side inside of him take over. Not judging an action or an event, not taking in what he or anyone else did to cause it, just pushing everything else out and solving the problem at hand, jumping into action and saving the guilt for later.

He was proud of himself for a few hours and it was nice to see first hand that he actually did have that side to himself. But it didn't last beyond that before the guilt set in... probably still festering to this day. And now, it's consuming him.

Without him in her life, this building was never bombed because, without him, Scott Dunn could never read Nikki Heat and become obsessed with her. Without Scott Dunn targeting her, she never had to go through that danger. Without him, she is still living safely in the apartment she lived in when they first met. She never had to go through losing everything as she did in this world.

Rick swallows his emotions as best he can as he stares into the windows of her apartment from across the street. What else has she been spared from because he used the artifact?

He looks down to the sidewalk and quickly jogs through the traffic of the evening, a dull twinge in his injured shoulder. He makes his way up the stairs, getting flashbacks with every step of the last time he ascended these stairs. The cops hadn't even arrived to the scene yet. He was the very first one in. He's only used it for his own ego in jest only because he's always known it was him that caused it in the first place.

Just like everything else in her life.

He shakes his head as he reaches the second floor and makes his way down the hall to her door at the end. A gut-churning feeling twists inside of him as he reaches up to knock. The door opens quickly and the moment he hears the mechanisms of the knob being turned, he's caught off guard by a smile. He remembers the last time she opened this door to him... clad in her pajamas and pointing her Glock 17 straight at his head.

Beckett pulls open her door with a cautious smile, wearing a casual get up for the night of loose-fitting black sweats and a thin cotton grey Henley shirt, her hair haphazardly tied back into a bun at the base of her skull. "Hi."

Rick pushes a smile to her as she steps aside to let him inside. He chooses not to speak as he breaks eye contact and cautiously steps inside. He doesn't know if it's a good thing that all he can think about right now as he looks toward the hallway that leads to the bathroom and bedroom is this apartment up in flames, a convenient distraction from his incredible longing to have her back, the real her or not.

"Did you..." she nervously says as he meanders toward her couch in a slow pace, rubbing her sweaty palms together, "did you find the place okay?" She's acutely aware of the chain hanging from her neck as she watches his eyes travel around her apartment. "I know it can be easy to miss."

He looks over his shoulder for a split second to send her a forced smile. "Found it just fine," he says simply and looks back toward the hallway, able to see the door into her bathroom from where he's standing.

She never had to go through any of it. Not Scott Dunn targeting her because of his story, not the bombing, losing her apartment. She still lives safe and sound here. It looks exactly like he remembers. Even the couch hasn't changed from when he slept on it that one night to protect her.

"_With what, your vast arsenal of rapier wit?" _Her joke rings in his ears as he looks to the couch.

With him still letting his eyes wander around her apartment, Beckett feels her heart clench painfully under a pair of straining lungs, quickly becoming overwhelmed by emotions, the necklace around her neck becoming heavy.

"So," Castle starts on as casual a sigh as he can manage and slowly starts to turn around to face her, "what did..." the words fall flat when he looks over to her standing by her door, a painful, emotional arch in her brow, looking up at him with wide, vulnerable eyes and clutching a very familiar ring in her hand, presenting it to him by holding it in front of her with the chain still on her neck.

Castle sighs deeply, not helping the feeling of being hurt. He knows what this is... because even across universes, it's always the same with her. It always has been... save for one night when the tide managed to shift in his favor. It always comes first. Not him and probably not even her. It's always that.

Beckett sees the moment when he sees the ring she's pinching and notices the moment he recognizes it.

Castle nods to himself as he cranes his neck. "I should have guessed." He mutters to himself.

"You said," she starts and takes a step toward him, "that in your world, you knew what this ring meant."

Castle looks up to her, the years of training of dealing with her emotional advances, mostly out of anger, being put to the test by the look of emotional vulnerability glimmering in her large hazel eyes. He feels his resolve strengthen, a calmness cladding him in armor against her looks and her tone.

"Beckett-" he tries.

"You said," she stops him and takes another step toward him, still pinching the ring in front of her, "that in your world, I didn't wear this anymore."

"I can't tell you." He gets to the point.

But she's left unphased, perhaps not hearing him. "There is only one reason I would ever stop wearing this ring and that's if I put whoever killed my mother behind bars."

"I can't tell you, Beckett." He says again in a calm voice.

She doesn't let it stop her and keeps pushing him, taking another step toward him, now just a few feet away. "In your world, you helped her, didn't you?" She pushes him, her voice rushed and erratic. "You solved it, didn't you? You put my mother's murderer away for her, didn't you?" She rushes her words. "And that's why she's marrying you, isn't it?"

Castle shifts his weight, looking away from her. "I don't really think-"

"You did it for her, Castle, you-you know everything." She tells him excitedly and coming up to stand directly in front of her.

"I can't tell you, Kate." He says sternly.

"You said that she didn't need the ring anymore, so you must have put her killer away. You know who killed her, you know why. You know it's everything to me, don't you? That's why she agreed to marry you, right? If you know who killed her, I need you to tell me."

"I can't do that, Beckett." He answers again in the same calm voice.

Her emotions well up in her eyes as she takes another step into him. "Please, Castle," she begins to beg, "I _have _to know who killed my mother! Just tell me! I don't know who I am if you don't. It means everything to me." She pleads, her voice soiled.

"I can't, Beckett." He shakes his head in a small motion, looking down to her as she's just one reach of the hand away from him.

"Please, please, Castle." She begs, tears falling down her face as she puts her hands on his chest. "Just tell me, tell me who killed her." She cries. "Please, it means everything to me. Just tell me who killed her!" She sobs and clutches the fabric of his shirt in her hands.

"Kate!" He says sternly and reaches up and cups her jaw with a firm hand.

On instinct, Kate's hand moves up to cover his on her face and she feels her neck kink to dip into the pressure of his grasp, her eyes stinging and burning from her tears. With his hand cupping her jaw, his thumb petting a small line over her the tip of her cheekbone, his baby blue eyes piercing straight into her, she feels... connected.

She doesn't know what possessed her to reach up and cover his hand with her's, doesn't know what part of her brain told her she could spill that much emotion out to him, doesn't know why she isn't violently pushing his hand away as he holds her face. She's always hated having her face touched by her old boyfriends. One of her biggest pet peeves while kissing.

But with him... all she can do is press her hand to his to make sure he doesn't move it.

Rick looks into her eyes, keeping them locked with his. "My opening that file on that case is something I can never forgive myself for." He tells her honestly. "It got a _lot _of people hurt that didn't deserve it." He says, breaking eye contact to look down to the opening of her henley shirt... to where her scar should be.

But all he finds is the perfectly flat, unmarked skin in the valley of her breasts. She was never shot in this world. Bracken never came after her. If he tells her everything, she'd run straight at him and Bracken would burn the entire precinct down just to get to her.

"Looking into that case..." he says slowly, his hand slowly reaching up as he gazes at the spot he's worshipped, only to try and poor as much apology into it as he can for causing it in the first place, "I had to watch a lot people die to pay for it." He tells her, touching the spot where the scar should be lightly with his middle finger.

Beckett jumps slightly, her skin tingling wildly at his touch, but being drawn back to reality by the darkness consuming his features.

"Whether we solved it or not, the suffering I caused is something I can't forgive myself for and I'll be damned if I have to live through it again." He tells her, looking up to her eyes again. "So I'm sorry," he tells her sincerely, leaning back a bit and petting her tears away, "but I can't tell you."

Beckett nods slightly in his grasp, drawing in a sniffle and looking down to the floor. "You know," she starts in a much more emotionally drained voice, "we both must be going crazy." She says to him sternly, looking up to him with a cold glare. "Because there's no way in _hell-" _she violently shoves his hand off of her with both hands, "I'd ever fall in love with someone as _selfish _as you." She spits angrily and quickly steps around him, storming her way toward her bedroom.

Left standing in place, Castle's heart feels heavy. "I never thought she fell in love with me because I helped her with her case."

Beckett stops at the hallway and has to turn around, seeing he's still facing the door. "Then why did she?"

Castle's breath is pulled from his lungs, his blood draining him of all life in his body... because he doesn't have an answer. Like a ghost, he turns to look at her. "I don't know."

* * *

The thunder cracks outside, the lightning illuminating his broad, impending figure in front of her.

Out of all things she thought she was sure of in her life... she was wrong about all of them. Everything else has failed her. Everything.

But him? He never failed her. Not even once. It was her that failed him. She knows that now. And now, she knows with every willful fiber of her being what she truly wants, what is truly important to her in the end. She knows now what she wants. And all she wants now is him. She knows she can lose everything in her life that used to guide and anchor her and not care about any of it, as long as she ends up with him. She knows because that's exactly what happened.

She lost everything that she used to prop herself up and didn't care about any of it. Her case, her badge, her job, her purpose, her shooter, her mother's murderer, even her own life. She gave him up to go after all of that... but it failed her. And she doesn't care about it anymore. She doesn't want any of it anymore. None of it. She only wants him. All this time, all the pain she put him through, lying to him, keeping secrets, denying him... how badly she's treated him and everything she's done to him for the sake of her own pride and ego... there's nothing in the world she can do to make up for all of it.

And the fact that she's standing in front of him now, looking up to his dark and lustful eyes, to her, feels like she's experiencing a miracle. And as she lifts her hand to tug her Henley shirt off her shoulder, giving him permission to seel their real partnership, she feels as if this is exactly where she's meant to be. That it's all lead up to this. That this moment as he lifts his hand to brush his palm over her shoulder and down her arm is a moment that they'll talk about for the rest of their lives.

Her heart quivering excitedly in her chest, she pulls at him and looks down to his lips, feeling her own crackle with want, even need, to feel his kiss again. Her breath stops as he lays her down to the expanse of his mattress, her arms falling out beside her as he climbs over her, hovering above her for a moment.

She lifts her hands and latches onto the bludges of his biceps, lifting her head off his bed to get his lips back, finally kissing him again. It stops her breathing, stealing everything rational away from her. Every incredible motion of his lips adds another day onto the admission of just how long she's wanted this to happen. Why she pushed this away for so long, pushed him away for so long, she can't rationalize her own justification if she had to right now.

And as he presses her back down to the bed with his kiss, she knows she wouldn't be able to rationalize anything if she had to. Her entire body is crawling and crackling with a deep-seeded want... for something deeper, to strive for a type of connection she's never wanted and never had but wants desperately with him.

An emotional connection.

Her mind blanks as she moves her hands against his chest and starts to unbutton his shirt, shimmying her way out of her own shirt as he nips and massages her lips in a sensual speed that's killing her. She tugs up on his unbuttoned shirt, pulling it from the top of his slacks just as he eases his hips down against her's, gently starting to apply his full weight down on top of her, kissing her with the same pressure.

Loving the feel of his body pressing down on her, she ropes her arms around his chest and pulls him down further, deepening their kisses. A throaty moan rips out of her chest as she fists the loose fabric of his unbuttoned shirt against his back, primal and animalistic in the sound of her grunt.

Rick pushes her head away with his lips as he puts a hand on the back of her thigh, her jeans still soaked through, and kisses a trail down the line of her jaw, his mouth never parting from her skin, breathing warm breaths over her neck and down her chest. She lightly drags her nails up his back as he slowly starts to work his way down her body, kissing under her jaw and down her neck, across her collar bone and down the valley of her breasts.

His hands tug her wet shirt down her arms just as he's kissing above her scar. Her back lifts up off the bed and she pulls her arms out of the sleeves of her wet Henley, splaying them out across the bed, arching her back into his lips as he takes her scar in his mouth, his hands grasping her ribcage as she mewls into him.

Her breath is ragged and off-kilter as he kisses his way down passed her bra and down to her stomach, pulling her shirt down her body with him. She reaches back and fists the fabric of the comforter, nodding her head to the side in ecstasy of him. But he stops when his lips brush passed her naval. She can hear his breath turn shakey, his hands slowly start to feel hesitant and scared against her waist as he holds her.

And it's then that she senses the full weight of what's happening hit her... perhaps hit them both.

This is really it. No matter what the future holds for either of them, it's this moment, here, tonight, that will change their lives forever. There's no going back after this. Because this isn't just a sexual fling, this isn't an escape for her. This isn't just another petty attempt to grasp at a dying relationship through sexual pleasure. This isn't just a physical act anymore. This isn't out of obligation because any number of dates, or because things between them are getting cold.

They're not doing this to scratch some sort of proverbial itch.

This is real. The connection between them is real. They're making love.

But that's exactly what she wants. And he's hesitating. She can sense his being unsure of himself, the cautiousness is practically vibrating off of him.

She pushes out a loud, ragged breath and moves her hands from the bed up to him, putting her fingers in his hair as his lips still hover over her abdomen. "Don't stop," she moans, running her fingers up his hair and across his neck. "Please, don't stop." She moans.

She can hear him breathe out against her stomach as he kisses her again just above the top of her jeans at the same time his fingers unbutton them. He kisses her low on her abdomen again as he grasps the waistband of her jeans and slowly starts to tug them off of her. She's mewling uncontrollably now, her legs moving back and forth as he works his way across her abdomen.

Rick leans up at the edge of the bed, pulling her soaked through Henley off her legs, leaving her sprawled out across his bed in only a bra and unbuttoned jeans. He quickly pulls off her boots as he leans back down to kiss the first patch of skin his lips will find just above the spot of her unbuttoned jeans, her hips lifting up into his kiss.

He leans back again and drops her boots to the floor, quickly reaching for the top of her jeans as she lifts her legs up in front of him. He peels the wet, clinging denim off her legs, leaving them bare. It feels incredible now that she's free of her wet clothing, her hot, sweaty skin left free to breathe. She spreads her legs just as he flings her inside-out jeans behind him. With a gentle hand, he takes her left ankle and presses a soft kiss to the side of her ankle bone, moving his right hand down her shin and his left moving down the inside of her leg, massaging her calf and circling her knee as he puts her ankle down onto his shoulder.

She's helpless as he worships her leg, moving the other leg around him as she's left still sprawled out across his bed, heaving. He slowly starts to kiss his way up her leg, up the inside of her calf and over the top of her thigh, crawling back over her.

And in her desperate mewling, her eyes have begun to burn again. What's she done to still deserve this? What's she done to earn this amount of forgiveness? How can what she's done to him still earn her this amount of love, caring, gentleness? After all the lies she's told and back handed jabs at him she's fired, how can he still be this loving toward her?

Emotionally charged and hot tears falling from her eyes, she leans up off the bed to slam her lips against him, wanting him back. She takes his shirt and pushes it off his shoulders, flinging it behind him and moving her arms around him, jumping in sheer pleasure at the feeling of their bare skin coming in contact for the first time as they wrap their arms around each other.

"Mmm..." she moans emotionally as she crawls back and twists him around to land on top of him, straddling his hips and cupping his face, their lips never parting.

Rick kisses her back, pushing her back upright with his lips as she holds his face. Her body is wracking with sobs and she has to stop kissing him as her face twists in her crying. "I'm so sorry, Castle." She pleads to him, nuzzling her forehead to his and holding his face. "For everything I've done to you," she continues, nuzzling his nose as she cries, "and the way I've treated you. I'm so... so sorry. Can you ever forgive me?"

"Kate," he says in a low, gruff voice.

She feels his hand reach up as he takes hold of her jaw, bringing her back to look into his eyes. Her burning eyes look down to him and she moves her hand up to cover his, petting his knuckles with her thumb and leaning her cheek into his touch.

He breathes softly and gazes up at her before speaking. "I've fantasized about this happening in a _million _different ways." He tells her, making her smile slightly. "And never once," he says softly, reaching across with his thumb to brush her tears away, "did you ever have tears in your eyes."

Kate feels a watery smile spread across her face as she leans deeper into his touch. This is why she only wants him. Why she worked so hard to get here, why she always knew it would be special for them.

She sniffles again and nods against his palm, looking down between them. "Don't pretend that what I did didn't break your heart, Rick."

"You're great at many things, Kate, but you're going to have to try a lot harder if you want to do that." He says casually, still cupping her face in his gentle hand.

Her tears burn in her eyes at his words. "How can you say that I didn't break your heart with everything I've done to you?"

He lets out a small breath and she can see the slightest smile flick its way onto his face as he strokes her cheekbone again. "I already told you how."

The memory flashes clear in her mind, but it's not painful this time. _Because I love you. _

Her smile lights up her face as she burrows deeper into his touch. She won't fail him, or his love, again.

"Now," he continues in a steady voice, "I'm going to fulfill a great many of those fantasies now... and I'm going to kiss you." He says, looking up at her expectantly. "Okay?"

She nods, her emotions charging her. "Okay."

"And I've always done it with a bit of fervor so-"

She nods vigorously against his hand, her eyes glimmering with happy tears. "Please."

Their lips descend upon each other in a quick-paced fervor of pure want, her hands fisting his hair and his arms engulfing her body as he pulls her back over him and rolls himself on top of her. "Mmm," she moans into him as she pulls as his shoulders.

* * *

"Mmm..." she moans again, mewling frantically in her sheets. "Don't stop, Rick."

Beckett's eyes snap open and she flys upright in her bed on a gasp. Looking around the darkness of her bedroom, drenched in a cold sweat under her pajamas, her mind all too quickly comes back to reality.

And she becomes enraged when reality hits her in the face. "_Ragh!" _She seethes, snatching up her pillow off the bed and flinging it across the room against the dresser and snapping at the sheets angrily. She pulls her legs up to her chest with tears running down her face. She forces her eyes closed as they well up, pressing her forehead down to her knees, starting to sob.

Why her? What did she do so wrong to not earn that?

* * *

The next morning, the elevator to the precinct dings and her head lists against the wall tiredly.

She was never able to get back to sleep, or never tried, after her nightmare woke her up, and there's only so much a cold shower can do to rid herself of losing sleep. She's just so tired... but can't stand to have another dream. Not like the one last night. Out of all the dreams she's had of them, last nights was by far the most intense. She's never experienced something so raw, so pure as what she experienced in her dreams last night.

Her heavy eyes bounce back open as the doors finally slide open and Beckett lethargically drags her feet out of the elevator and into homicide. God, she's tired... and her headache just won't go away.

She drops her bag heavily by the door to her office and only goes inside to snatch her coffee cup off her desk. She moves back out, still dragging her feet across the floor of the precinct on her way toward the kitchen. She barely notices her detectives already inside as she starts to move toward the coffee maker.

"Yo," Esposito says to his partner, who's standing protectively near the box of donuts, "the coffee maker broken again?"

"Yep," Ryan says as she hears Espo shove the carafe back into the brewer with a frustrated clatter. "Morning, Captain." Ryan says to her as she makes her way back out the other side of the kitchen.

"Get the coffee machine fixed, Ryan." She groans in a tired voice as her heavy head lists off to the side, shifting her balance again.

"Is this thing always busted?" He asks his partner as the Captain is steadying herself against the door.

"Ugh, always."

A violent ring stings inside of her ears suddenly. "Mmm..." she groans as her headache swells more painfully than it has in the past several weeks. She presses her palm to her forehead as she becomes dizzy.

"You okay, Captain?" Esposito asks her.

"Just..." she waves behind her, "just get the coffee maker fixed." She says and shoves off the door jam.

"Where you going, Captain?" Ryan asks her.

"I need coffee."

* * *

"That's one skinny grande latte with two pumps sugar-free vanilla for you." The girl says all too happily to the half-asleep woman standing at the coffee stand on the corner. She hasn't had one of these in... who knows how long. She usually settles for the coffee in the kitchen. She never treats herself to one of these. It feels like a lifetime since she's had good coffee like this.

Kate lethargically hands the girl a five and grabs the cup. "Keep the change."

She just wants this to be over. She wants her old, normal, boring life back. She can't stand living like this anymore. She wants it to end.

God, she's exhausted.

She takes a few steps away from the stand and lists the cup to her lips, tilting her aching head back to take the first sip. The coffee hits her pallet and she lets herself relax. But everything around her freezes once the coffee slides down her throat and her ears begin to ring loudly.

And her headache vanishes.

Her eyes snap shut as it all comes back to her. Every single cup of coffee, every morning, six years, it all rushes back to her all at once, their entire partnership all flooding back to her in bright, violent flashes in her mind. Everything they've shared, their whole life built together, their whole relationship, all of her memories, all of their love, comes back to her.

The real her. Now, she feels whole again.

She drops the coffee to the pavement and opens her eyes, realization flooding through her and all confusion disappearing, her mind now consumed with one thing and one thing only.

"Rick..."

* * *

_A/N: Another update coming at ya! So, what'd ya think! :D_

_(Also, if some of the line breaks aren't showing up, let me know. They're there in the doc manager, but some don't show up when I'm rereading the chapter and updating it doesn't seem to fix it. In this chapter, there's supposed to be one right after Rick says "I don't know" to Beckett in her apartment that's not showing up.)  
_


	11. Chapter 11

Alexis comes downstairs for the morning to find it quiet.

The past couple of weeks, the mornings have been great. Just like they used to be. Dad would be up and about, a soft smile on his face as he greeted her for the morning and asked her what she wanted for breakfast. It brought her back to her childhood when it was just the two of them, after her mom left. She never expected for him to stay as devoted to her as he was back then, always making her breakfast and letting her play a part in their little family by helping him make dinner and setting the table.

They had a maid come by every now and then, but for the most part, he did it all. Until he killed off Derrick Storm. After that, he had nothing to work toward.

But now, it's like he never changed. More so, he seems even more devoted, stronger, more like the dad that used to carry her on his shoulders through Coney Island.

This morning feels different though. He left suddenly last night and she was asleep by the time he must have come home. Something having to do with that police captain, but she doesn't like to dig too deep into that hole, feeding the delusion. It's a strange duality, that she doesn't want to feed this insane delusion he has but also needs this insane delusion to keep the father around she's missed so much.

The kitchen is dark as she stops on the landing of the stairs. Gram is probably gone for the day already. The kitchen is still organized, no sign of any breakfast being cooked. The lights in the living room are all turned off and the side door leading to his bedroom is closed.

"Dad?" She calls out, hopping down the last four steps in her socks.

When she doesn't receive a response, she starts to move toward the closed door to his office.

"Dad?" She calls out again as she approaches the door. She slows to a stop as she reaches for the handle, listening intently.

'_And I cannot get you out.' _It's that song again. She hates this kind of music, this tawdry, mass-produced for the lowest common denominator, garbage. But withholds her opinion as she takes the handle of the door with a cautious hand. _'Oh, you're all I taste...'_

The song becomes full volume when she slowly pushes the door open. The lights are still off and she can see the laptop sitting open on the desk against the wall. Her eyes travel around the room to see him standing near the alcove on the left side of his office, staring out the window. She remembers she used to take her afternoon naps over there when she was growing up.

"Dad?" She asks quietly, standing near the door.

Rick is briefly broken out of his thoughts by the sound of his daughter's voice and looks over his shoulder, uncrossing his arms with a heavy smile. "Hey, sweetie."

Alexis smiles and points toward his laptop as she enters the room in her usual wardrobe for this world of a pair of black yoga pants and a loose-fitting long-sleeved t-shirt. "This your favorite song or something?" She asks after the music as he slowly paces his way toward her.

His finger taps the space bar to pause the music. He smiles another heavy smile down at her. "Something like that."

Not moving to continue with any morning niceties, Rick turns back around and paces his way toward the window. Alexis watches him for a moment, not helping to notice that look in his eyes. That dark... helpless look. A look she's all too familiar with. That's the same look he had etched on his face when the reviews came in for his book.

"Everything okay, Dad?" She asks, following him over to the alcove.

He takes in a quick breath through his nose and recrosses his arms slowly, adjusting the dull twinge in his shoulder. "When I came home last night, I decided to do a bit of research."

Alexis stops adjacent to him a couple of feet, watching as he folds his arms together. "Okay." She indulges him. "On what?"

Rick's heart aches, his place in the world lost. Maybe he's being shown this for a reason. He was wrong. "On the true effect of my not meeting her."

Alexis crosses her arms protectively, not liking his tone. "What do you mean?"

"I never realized just how much damage I caused by pursuing her." He laments to himself, staring off out the window. "Without me in her life, there's so much she never had to go through... because of me."

Alexis paces her way toward him until she's standing next to him, looking up to his lidded eyes. "Like what?"

Rick blinks in quick succession, batting away emotion. "She never had to suffer because I pushed her to look into her mother's murder... all for my own selfish gratification." He says, clenching his jaw. "She was never shot in the cemetery that day because Montgomery was never killed. Montgomery," he chuckles darkly, a smile briefly appearing on his face, "he retired just like he'd planned to do. He and the girls live up in Buffalo now. He was never shot by Lockwood because Lockwood was never sent after Raglan."

She hates seeing him this broken. She didn't know how to deal with it when she was a teenager. She hid in her room when he started going off the deep end because of his poor book reviews. But this is different. This is a different kind of blame. She doesn't want to go too far, has grown more guarded over the years, but... he needs someone by him. She uncrosses her arm and slowly puts it on his back.

"And Lockwood was never sent after Raglan because he never called Beckett to tell her about what him and Montgomery were doing and how it got her mother killed. Raglan died all by himself in Queens Medical Center. Because of me not being in her life, she... and a lot of other people, never had to go through the hell that my constant need for a mystery brought everyone." His voice is starting to become constrained, tight. "All the pain I caused her because I made her look into it, she never had to go through any of it."

Her heart feels ripped from her chest when she sees his eyes glisten with tears.

"She really is better off without me."

Alexis' heart is bring wrenched. She can't stand seeing her dad like this. And before she can argue with herself, she's moving to his other side and pulling at his arm to tuck herself into his side, wrapping her arms around his chest. That police captain, whoever she is, may be better off without him, but she's not. He's still her dad.

Rick chokes an emotional sob as Alexis tucks herself underneath his arm and he hugs her to his side, rubbing her shoulder.

"Maybe the artifact didn't grant me my deepest desire by sending me here." He thinks out loud. "Maybe it showed me where I belong. Maybe it showed me the way things are supposed to be, that me and her were just... never really meant to be. I mean," he chokes back, emotion welling up again. Admitting to himself that she's better off without him is one of the worst pains he's ever had to put himself through. "All the hell we went through, all that pain and grief, my abandoning her at our wedding, putting Bracken away, I thought it had some purpose, that maybe it was a test, but... maybe pain is just pain. Maybe it doesn't always have a reason."

Alexis nuzzles herself against her father's chest. "I still love you, Dad."

Rick's emotions, already running high, get the better of him and win in their battle. He turns and works passed the twinge in his shoulder to wrap both arms around his little girl, tucking her head underneath his chin. "I love you too, pumpkin."

Alexis stiffens in her dad's arms, hearing his old pet name for her... for the first time in years. Slowly, she leans back and looks up with disbelief at her father.

He looks back down at her. "What?"

Her smile flutters across her features in awe. "You haven't called me that since high school."

Rick rolls his eyes to himself, smiling despite his emotions and pulls her back into his arms. "Well," he begins as she wraps her arms back around him, "maybe you could think about getting rid of the hair dye, hmm?"

Alexis chuckles happily against his chest and squeezes him. And everything is perfect until something catches inside of her brain, and brow pinches slightly and she pushes off him, lifting her head off his chest. "Did you say you put Senator Bracken away?"

Rick nods slightly to himself, looking at her with very guarded eyes. "It can't leave this room but... yes. Why?"

Alexis pushes off him and goes over to his laptop, pulling up his office chair. She clacks at his keyboard for a minute before looking over his shoulder. "Not the same Senator Bracken that's running for President this election." She says, pulling up a webpage.

Rick turns and slowly paces his way toward him. "Beckett and I were rushing to find evidence against him because we knew we'd never be able to touch him if he won."

Alexis looks back toward his laptop and starts typing again, one hand on the touchpad. "Bracken was trending last week for a statement his Chief of Staff made, where he said that in Bracken's presidency, the government will consider cyber attacks an open act of war, and would respond with as much force as necessary."

Rick's brow pinches and he moves to the laptop to look at the screen. On the screen, he sees a headline, singing Bracken's praises as he sits at the head of a conference table. "But governments launch cyberattacks against us all the time."

"He claims that it would be an effective deterrent to protect the country's cyberinfrastructure."

"Or turn The Day After into a historical documentary." Rick adds.

"China's Prime Minister has already issued a response saying they're willing to respond to any threat of war." Alexis explains, looking up over her shoulder at her dad.

Rick nods toward the laptop. "What's he polling?"

"Gallup has him polling in second place." She says, looking back to the laptop.

"No," Rick says and reaches over her to chicken peck at his keyboard. "Don't go there. Here." He says, pulling up another webpage.

Alexis smiles despite herself and looks up to her dad. "The Vegas betting odds?" She asks incredulously.

Rick cocks his head with a smirk. "Most accurate polls in the world, and according to this," he says, scrolling down, "Bracken at 35% chance at winning in an open election."

"That's..." Alexis trails off, leaning back in his office chair, "pretty high."

Looking at the odds, everything else starting to fit together in his mind, Rick's stomach falls into his feet.

_'One cannot tamper with the natural order of things without a severe backlash!' _

Like a ghost, Rick mutters to himself, "I think we just found that severe backlash."

* * *

It's mid-morning by the time Rick has worried himself out. Alexis is out with some people from the New York office of the non-profit she works for out in LA, having to deal with her own 'other-worldly' obligations, leaving him to his own devices. He's having a hard time worrying about this world, maybe not fully accepting this is where he's being forced to make his home. The artifact is broken, and the pumpkins don't seem to be helping any.

And he can't stand to eat another piece of pumpkin pie.

As the morning has worn on, the whiplash from Alexis' revelation about Bracken has gone to the back of his mind, if not, left completely. Now, he's right back to where he was. Feeling small, alone, shameful, worthless, standing in the alcove at the end of his office, as rain starts to sprinkle onto the pane, listening to their song. It's the one thing he can hold onto of their relationship in this world. He can still feel her rest her head against his shoulder after they finally found their song on the dance floor of Faircroft Academy.

_"Then why did she?" _The question echos in his mind for the thousandth time.

He grits his teeth, mostly projecting the blame inward. Because he knows how she is. It took her almost an entire year into their relationship for her to actually tell him that she loved him. And even then, the circumstances where... forced. Was it just because he had the means to solve her case for her? If he'd never brought it up at all and left it alone just like she wanted in the beginning, would he still have been as important to her? Would they have been able to get married, would she have been able to work passed any of it if Bracken was still walking free?

All the trouble he's caused, abandoning her on their wedding, leaving her standing at the alter after everything he did to scramble a perfect wedding together at the Hamptons, abandoning her now. He can almost picture her in the loft, tearing out her clothes that have already taken over a decent chunk of his closet into a bag with self-satisfying tears running down her face because she was right about him in the beginning, that he left her yet again.

He's a husk at this point when it starts to rain heavier against the panes of the window he's brooding in front of, but over the sound of the clatter of the rain, he hears a knock on the door. Rick looks over his shoulder, through the bookcase, sighs, unfolds his arms, moves over to his laptop and clicks the space bar to pause the music, and makes for the door.

He pulls it open and feels his breath stolen from him when he sees her standing at his door, in a pair of black heels, black slacks, a blue turtle neck, and a black blazer, her hair let down in loose curls, waving down her shoulders. She always wears her hair back in this world.

She feels her entire body tighten with excitement as he flings open the door, seeing him again for the first time in what feels like her entire life, wearing a pair of darker jeans, and a dark purple sweater that hugs against his strong shoulders.

The moment she meets his eyes, he watches curiously as her eyes seem to glow with a brightness of excitement, and her features start to lift into a happy open smile for a moment before she breaks eye contact and looks down to the floor, clasping her hands together in front of her. "Umm..." she starts in a small voice, "hi."

Rick checks himself, knowing he's projecting his desires, and stomps down the fluttering in his heart as hard as he can. Straightening his spine and rolling back his shoulders, he gives her a nod. "Captain Beckett."

She remembers last night. These past weeks have been like living a waking dream. Like she's been trapped inside of an observation room, forced to watch someone else live her life. "I just wanted to come by and um..." she nervously starts, trying to find a way inside, "apologize for my behavior last night."

Rick blinks, slightly taken aback by the gesture. Even his world's Kate never came by just to apologize. Even if she felt she had to, it was usually saved for the morning when he came by with her coffee. "No, that's alright, you didn't-"

"No, no," she interrupts him with a raise of her hand, "I was out of line and," she chuckles, "might have gotten into my private reserves a bit too much."

Rick nods to her, "If it wasn't for the medication, I'd be doing that myself." He says with a light chuckle of his own.

Kate nods, looking at his shoulder that she remembers pressing against, his blood pooling under her palms. God, he took a bullet for her... and it wasn't even the real her. Sometimes, she still doesn't know what she's done to deserve him. "Um..." she stumbles again, "this might sound like a weird request but..." she says, looking up at him again, entwining her fingers together and pointing inside, "do you mind if I come inside and have a look around?"

Rick knits his brow together a bit before coming up with a quip to dispell her nervousness, well-trained in the tactic of disengaging her. "I don't suppose you have a warrant." He says with a smirk.

She meets him with a very familiar grin of her own. "I could get one if it's any trouble, Castle."

He breathes a soft, inaudible chuckle and smiles, stepping aside. "It's no trouble. Come on in."

Her heart fluttering wildly, she meets his eyes again and smiles as she steps by him and into the loft... that's not the loft she remembers.

What the hell happened?

Kate slowly paces her way through the foyer with her hands clasped in front of her, her eyes moving toward the kitchen. There's a rack hanging above the island in this loft. The one thing she's always loved about this loft is that it was always so open. She looks over her shoulder to Rick, who's standing near the door, looking to a spot on the floor away from her. "You ever think about getting rid of the rack?" She asks, gaining his eyes. "Above the island," she points out, looking back toward the kitchen. She shrugs and looks over her shoulder. "Might make the kitchen seem... bigger."

Rick nods at her slowly. "I've uh... I've thought about it." He tells her as she slowly paces through the loft.

Her eyes rove over the living room, where the layout of the furniture, even the furniture itself, is all wrong. The couch is facing in the wrong direction, there are these tacky, oversized throw pillows everywhere, these ugly white drapes hanging from the ceiling.

This loft has Martha written all over it.

But as she paces all too slowly through loft, her eyes catch the far corner of the living room, only to find something missing. She turns around to him quickly. "Do you play piano?" She asks him.

Rick stops a good distance behind her, looking toward the spot where the piano used to be in his world. "Uh... well, Alexis took lessons when she was ten, so I had one moved in for her to practice on, but uh... I," he struggles, not knowing what possessed him to get rid of the piano, "got rid of it a while back."

She nods to him, almost sadly and turns back around, continuing to slowly pace her way through the loft. The time they've spent here, it all floats through her mind. The nights they've passed out in each other's arms on the couch, the nights she clearly remembers falling asleep watching a movie with her head against his thigh and his fingers working a strand of her hair, only to wake up in bed. She's always wished she'd faked being asleep just once so she could remember him carrying her to bed.

After another silent minute or so, she makes it to the door to his office, and gently pushes it open. But the instant her eyes go into the office, she jumps back, horrifyingly startled at what she sees.

Yes, this is definitely Martha's loft.

She hears him sigh behind her. Kate turns with an almost sad twinge in her brow, looking over to his soft eyes. "I've tried talking her into taking it down but she won't do it."

Kate turns back around and shakes her head. "The entire wall?" She asks the wall-sized, multi-colored portrait of his mother.

"I've been thinking of staging a robbery to get rid of it, but figured the NYPD frowns on that." He jokes with her.

"We'll look the other way, trust me." She jokes back, looking over her shoulder as she continues into his office.

The first thing she notices is his laptop, sitting open on his desk... with iTunes open. She taps her finger down against the space bar and the music starts. "_Oh, you run away..." _Her heart swells achingly inside of her and she feels like she's floating at the sound of the music, her eyes drifting shut and remembering exactly what it felt like to lean against him on that dance floor. "_Cause I am not what you found." _

She taps the space bar again and looks over her shoulder to see him standing at the entrance to his office, looking to the floor. He's keeping his distance, pulling away from her. Even as their song plays, knowing she's thinking of her. And as she watches him, she can feel herself falling in love with him all over again.

Because even across universes, he's still staying devoted to her. Sometimes, she still asks herself what's she done to deserve such loyalty from a man as amazing as him.

"I've always loved that song."

"I've always loved that song." They answer in unison.

* * *

_A/N: I had about 1.5k words written, continuing this chapter, but the scene wasn't even half way finished. Didn't want to make the chapter too long. You're going to hate me, but the next chapter will be up as soon as the system lets the updates show, so 24 hours after I post this chapter. Let me know what you think. :)_


	12. Chapter 12

Kate's heart swells brightly in her chest as she catches him, holding back a smile and paying close attention as he looks to anywhere but her. Even across worlds, across universes... he's still devoted to her. Why did she ever ask him why she loved him? Kate nods to herself and starts to meander her eyes around the office, slowly turning toward the alcove. She likes the alcove. She's cuddled up on the bench with a book and a hot cup of coffee courtesy of the love of her life when it would snow more than once.

She lets more memories float around her mind until she catches sight of a spot near the far end of the bookcase.

It's got to still be there.

Suddenly, Kate moves for the end of the bookcase near the alcove and runs her fingers along the spines of a line of books in one of the middle shelves. Rick watches her out of the corner of his eye, lost as to what she's looking for, or even why she's here. And it's not until her fingers start to slow near where he keeps his collection of Xanth novels that he starts to become worried.

Kate runs her fingers along the books until she can find the one she's looking for. Last shelf, fourth from the left, "three... four." She whispers to herself as she finds it.

Rick notices the book she chose and starts to panic. "No, no, no, that-that-that's uh-um... that's uh..."

Kate pulls the book from the shelf and opens the front cover, finding exactly what she's looking for. She takes the photo out of the spine and shows it to him, remembering the incredible fury that ignited in her system the first time she found this. An old, very well cared for photo of him and Kyra in their college years. With a soft smile and an even softer arch in her brow, she shows him the photo.

But Rick cranes his neck, at least thankful that it's this worlds Kate that found it. "Just an old girlfriend, that's all." He says with a heavy smile toward her. But... "Wait, how did you-"

"April 5th." She states plainly, still holding the photo. "2013."

Rick stops, at a complete loss, as he listens to her.

"We were playing laser tag." She starts in a soft voice, slowly approaching him. "You were in the kitchen, hiding underneath the counter. I was in here," she waves toward the spot at the end of the bookshelf, "trying to line up a shot, so I moved the books out of the way to get a clear shot at you when this picture fell out." She lifts the photo up. "At first I was... _furious... _finding out you kept a picture of her around. But then..." she trails off, smiling, "I remembered that you're the kind of guy that reminds yourself of your failures. Maybe a little too much. So..." she smiles again, "that night, I waited until you were asleep and I snuck out here and replaced it... with a picture of us. A picture I took of us at your birthday party earlier that week. You were hugging me from behind when I took the picture from my phone and you were kissing me on the cheek and I was just... so happy that you were happy and I was smiling so big. So that way," she continues, letting the photo down, "if you ever went to remind yourself of where you and Kyra failed, you'd see that you and I succeeded."

Rick looks at her with wide, hesitant eyes. "I-I... never..."

She smiles brightly again, letting the photo and the book fall into the chair behind her as she darts over to the laptop and clicks the spacebar again.

"_Oh, you're in my veins," _the song continues as Kate turns around to face him with a watery smile, her eyes glistening with happiness. She remembers all of it, everything. Down to the way he kissed her under the disco ball, how she let her eyes drift shut as she leaned against him, leaning her weight against his shoulder as he nuzzled his cheek into her hair, with her mind playing fantasies through her head of what it would feel like to dance to this song for the first time as husband and wife.

"That's our song." She tells him, coming up to him, putting her hands on his stomach. Even now, Rick pulls away from her, his brow hard and his eyes rigid with disbelief. He's taking a step back, away from her as she touches him. She's still a stranger to him. "The song we chose for our wedding. The song that played as we danced at Faircroft Academy." She continues. "I still remember how you kissed me, Castle." She shrugs her shoulders, shaking her head. "How you pulled me back in with your arms around me after the first kiss and kept kissing me until the song ended."

Rick staggers back a step, his eyes dilating with fear. "I-I didn't kiss you." He says to her in a shaky voice.

Kate's heart flutters, still competing with the butterflies in her system that are swarming around in her stomach for most unnerving sensation. With a frustrated smile, she lets her shoulders deflate and moves passed him in a brisk pace back into the living room. She turns around near the couch and sees him following her hesitantly, slowly turning out of the entrance to his office.

"The couch," she says, motioning to the living room, "it used to be facing the other way. I always liked it that way because on our days off, I got to watch you write." She tells him with a smile that won't go away. Her lips are dying to feel him again. She has memories of every kiss they've shared, however frantic, demanding and wanting at night or soft, light, and lazy in the morning. But her lips, her body's memory, can't feel him anymore. "I always loved watching you write because I got to see you in your element. I still laugh," she chuckles brightly, "at how you'd get up suddenly and go to your... super-secret inspiration booth."

Rick's brow pinches and his eyes narrow. No one knows about that but her. The real her. But... no, there's no way that it can be her. He can't believe it's her. This is some sort of trick. Or... or maybe it's another test, to test his resolve. Maybe the artifact is testing him. "B-but-" he stutters, shaking his head, "no one knows about-"

"The shower." She blurts out, taking a step toward him. Rick stops, his breath stolen right out of his lungs, looking back up to her to see her still smiling at him brightly. "When you're stuck on dialogue, you go in the shower because the running water helps you block everything else out. I know because," she tells him with her center coiling, "during my suspension, I snuck in behind you one afternoon after we'd just spent the morning together and you got really peeved that I interrupted you. It was..." she trails off, rolling her eyes and further increasing the amount of her face her smile is taking up, "... really adorable."

Rick breathes a shallow breath, shaking his head vigorously and squeezing his eyes shut. "You..." he starts, but corrects himself, "she came in when I was working out dialogue between Nikki and Rook that I was having trouble making come off organic and she asked me why I was talking to myself. She-" he trails off, looking back up to her to see her encouraging him to continue by the bright glimmer in her eyes and her even brighter smile. "She made fun of me, she didn't know I was trying to write, she just-"

"I just wanted to keep making love." She tells him in a sweet tone, her heart aching for him. "That's all we did during my suspension, Castle. My suspension was probably some of the greatest times we've had. Everything was so new and unexplored," she says, her voice quickly turning deep and husky at the memories, "and forbidden. That was the first time we made love in the shower."

"And the second." His mind blurts out after her.

Kate breathes a loud laugh and feels her eyes glisten with emotion. Her body misses him so much right now. "We sat here when I told you about trying on my wedding dress." She begins again, motioning toward the living room. "About how I could feel my mom's presence, about how I missed her and..." she trails off, quickly getting choked by emotion and looks away. This would be the time when Rick would quickly step in and wrap his arms around her and stroke her back until she could continue. But now, he's just standing there, staring at her with disbelief. "And how I knew how much she'd love being a part of planning the wedding and how much..." she can feel tears running down her face as she remembers telling him, "how much she'd love you, and how much I wished she could've met you."

It's killing him, seeing tears in her eyes. But he knows, this is a test of his resolve, of his mettle. A part of him knows, if he passes this test, he'll see her again. If he can make it through this, somehow, the universe will set itself right and send him home. "This..." he starts weakly, "you're not..."

Kate breathes out an emotional sigh and looks behind her, then rushes through the living room, over to a spot in the foyer. "And right here?" She asks him from across the loft.

Rick, on weak legs, follows her, rounding the table and stopping a good distance away from her, watching her stand on a spot just a few feet away from the door.

"I was standing right here. May-"

"Seventh," he cuts her off, answering for her and recalling the night picture perfectly. "2012."

Kate's already bright, watery smile shines again and she nods. "That was the night I came to you, Rick. The night my walls came down." She tells him, pouring as much emotion into her tone as she can ever hope to. "The night that changed my life forever." She continues as he begins to slowly approach her, now coming within reaching distance of her. "What'd I say, Rick?"

"That..." he starts, his brow still pinched and his eyes still hard and guarded, "he got away... and you didn't care." She closes her smile and looks over to him with glimmering eyes. "That you almost died... and-"

"And all I could think about..." she continues for him, not moving from her spot but reaching up and putting her hands on his chest exactly as she had them that night and looking up at him with the same watery, honest smile that she did that night, "was you. I just want you."

Rick's heart is squeezed painfully in his chest, feeling like it's being ripped apart. This can't be real. This can't be her.

Kate flattens her hands on his chest and softens her smile up at him. "I remember, Rick." She whispers. "I remember us, I remember all of it." She tells him excitedly.

"That's not possible." He whispers back, his eyes still hard and his expression still etched with seriousness, jaw still clenched.

"Castle," she chuckles lightly, shaking her head and reaching up to gently place her hand on his jaw, petting his cheek with her thumb, "it's me."

He snaps his eyes shut and shakes his head. "No," he pushes her away suddenly, jumping back a few feet. "No, it's not possible." He says as he moves away from her. "No, you're here to test me, but... but I have to find a way back home."

"Castle," she tries as he staggers away from her.

"I have to find a way back to my home and to _my _Kate."

"Rick!" She snaps and goes to him, turning him to face her by the shirt sleeve and stepping in front of him, taking a hold of his face with a pair of gentle hands, looking deeply into his glistening eyes. "I _am... _your Kate."

His eyes narrow as his emotions get the better of him.

"Baby," she chuckles softly, petting his hair back like she always loves to do in bed, "it's me."

"No," he tells her again, pulling her hands off him and moving even further away from her. "No, I can't betray her like this." He sounds as if he's speaking to himself now. "My Kate is out there somewhere waiting for me."

"I'm _right here, _Rick." She tries again to no avail as he continues to pace wildly away from her.

"She's out there, I know it. And every moment I spent in this hell hole of a universe is another moment she's losing faith that I'll come back."

"Lose faith in you?!" She asks back at him, not believing what she's hearing from him. "Castle, I _love _you!"

When he turns around, he has tears in his eyes. "I already abandoned her once. I already ruined the most important day of our lives. I _can't _lose her to this!"

"The wedding?" She feels her heart wrench, seeing the man she loves go through such torment. As he turns away from her again, Kate jumps toward him and puts herself in front of him, stepping into him and taking ahold of his face again, looking him directly in the eye. "Is that what this is about? The wedding?"

"I can't-"

"Baby..." she shakes her head, stroking his stubble with her thumbs, "I never blamed you for what happened at the wedding." She catches a tear with the pad of her thumb, bringing his gaze back up to her's when he dips his head to look away and hide his emotions from her. "If my wedding doesn't involve getting married to you, I don't want it."

"I broke your heart, Kate. I'm sorry, I-"

"Hey," she stops him in a soft voice, taking a pause to make sure he's listening intently. "You're great at many things, Rick." She tells him, recalling his words perfectly from their night together. "But you're going to have to try _a lot _harder if you want to do that."

His brow pinches slightly as his eyes begin to clear. "That's-"

"That's what you said to me our first night together." She tells him, petting his hair back and moving her eyes down to his lips. "When I asked you how it was possible I didn't break your heart after everything I lied to you about." She strokes his hair, petting his stubble on his jaw with her thumb. "And you said-"

"Because I love you." He says to her, receiving another watery smile from her. His hand slowly reaches up, still not wanting to betray the woman he loves, and slowly cups her cheek. "Kate?"

Overcome, she reaches over and places a hand over his and leans into his touch with a smile, burying herself in his palm. "I've missed you so much, Rick."

Rick pets her cheekbone, just like he always does when he holds her cheek, feeling her reach over and place a hand on his jaw, mirroring his gesture.

"Can we please kiss now? Because I have the memory of kissing you in the kitchen in our pajamas as we were making breakfast what feels like this morning but I felt like I haven't kissed you in my entire life, so co-"

He cuts her off by slamming his lips down onto her, pulling her in with his hand, pressing the pads of his fingers into her neck, kissing her with more passion then she's ever felt she's experienced, but with just as much passion as she remembers him kissing her with. She returns every ounce of hard fervor to him, pressing her lips up against him as hard as she can, pulling herself closer to him by snaking her arms around his neck. She feels his hand press against the small of her back as he reaches around and weaves his fingers into her hair.

"Mmm..." she moans against him, running her fingers up into his hair, disheveling it. "There's not-" she pants into his mouth, "a giant portrait of Martha in your bedroom, is there?" She pants breathlessly.

He takes her lips for himself, gently picking at her bottom lip with his teeth and making her buckle into him. "I'd burn this loft to the ground before I let that happen."

"Then can we go in there?" She pants against his lips.

"Please."

* * *

_A/N: I write dialogue in the shower :3  
_


	13. Chapter 13

It's as if she knows what true peace feels like.

She's felt this before, has memories of times like this. Countless memories of times like this with him. In her bed at her apartment, in the bed at the Hamptons, here in this bed more than any of the others. But her body feels as if she's living through it for the first time. It's surreal, knowing she's been through everything with him, but at the same time, feeling she can't put herself back in the moment and feel the sensations she did in her nerves, or her bones, or her skin. She remembers the pain of that bullet, remembers thinking how humid and sticky it felt in the cemetery, remembers his confession, but at the same time, can't feel the pain or the humidity on her skin or in her bones.

But now, she feels.

Kate smiles lazily, her body comfortably numb and sated from their long, passionate reunion that's led the time late into the afternoon. Laying on her stomach, she faces her fiance and gazes into his eyes. Rick is on his back, his head turned over against the mattress, sitting where the pillows should be that now lay tossed on the floor, along with the comforter and every bit of their clothing. The only thing covering them is a single thin white sheet pulled up just below their shoulders, leaving Rick's chest bare.

Kate finds the energy to move her hand up off the bed and reach over to him, lovingly placing her hand on his jaw, petting his cheek with her thumb. He gives her a warm smile and moves his lips to kiss her wrist before turning to gaze back into her sparkling eyes, then reaches over with a heavily sated hand and softly caresses her cheek with the back of his finger.

She smiles brightly as a strand of her hair falls against his finger and into her face. "It's so strange." She mutters, her words slurred from her face mashed into the bed, still stroking his cheek in an intimate motion of love.

Rick adjusts his head against the matress and nudges her hair out of her face, tracing the strand down with his fingers before letting his hand fall back to the bed and he begins to twirl it around his finger. "Strange how?"

Kate massages his jaw with her palm, going against the grain of his stubble and sliding her hand down his neck and starts to pet his chest. "I feel like I've been living in a dream." She says, looking away from his eyes and down to his chest, his skin offering up a pleasant warmth that she has very fond memories of as she lays her forearm across the expanse of it. "Like I've been trapped inside of..." she trails off, shaking her head against the bed as she searches for the right term, "of a glass room, looking out onto the world and I just now figured out how to get out."

Rick reaches up and softly puts his hand down on her wrist, petting his thumb over the bones in the back of her hand. "I still can't really believe it's you." He says, with too much honesty.

She can hear a certain shake in his voice and see a certain glimmer in his eye that's causing him to pull away from her, even as he holds her wrist against his chest, like a memento pressed to his heart. Kate leans herself closer to him, moving her arm up inside of his hand to softly grasp the side of his neck and looks down to his lips just before putting her lips down to his in a soft, firm, loving kiss.

There's a certain way only she knows how to kiss him, a certain way she's practiced two years getting just right for different situations. She knows how to work his lips, just as well as he does her's. She knows how to kiss him to tell him to she wants more fire and fervor in their lovemaking. She knows how to kiss him in the morning to tell him she wants just a touch more sugar in her coffee, or that she wants something carb-heavy for breakfast. She knows how to kiss him at night to tell him she just wants to fall asleep against his chest.

But this kiss, that she's making sure every part of her lips is sealed against him, not forcing her lips down, but softly pulling him up to her as she cups his jaw, is for reassurance. She'd use this kiss when they'd get into an argument over something small and petty and he was feeling guilty that night for making her angry, and she was feeling sorry for getting angry in the first place.

She wants to kiss him now to reassure him that it's really her, that there's only one person, no matter what universe they're in, that knows how to kiss him like this.

"Mmm..." she moans softly as she strokes his stubble and lets him go with a slow, satisfying pluck. She leans up with a bat of her eyelashes, gazing into his eyes as they slowly peel open, and pets back his hair, picking at his bottom lip with her thumbnail. "It's me, babe."

Rick doesn't smile, but his eyes rove over her features in admiration. His hand slowly reaches up to her and he softly starts to stroke her left cheek with the back of his fingers. "I don't understand." He says with an honest twinge of emotion. "How'd you get here?" Kate smiles and reaches up to take his hand, pressing a kiss to his palm before moving it to cup her cheek so she can lean down into it. "I thought the artifact made it so we never met."

"I don't know." She says to him, looking down to his lips with a small shake of her head and reaching down to tickle his bottom lip with her thumbnail again. "Maybe..." she muses out loud, "maybe the artifact restored my memory somehow?"

"But," Rick shakes his head, not following her train of thought, "the artifact was broken when I was shot."

Kate nods against his palm as it slides down off her cheek and lands onto her forearm that's still laying draped across his chest. "When you were shot," she chuckles emotionally and looks over to the bandages wrapped around his shoulder.

_'Look out!' _She hears in her ears as she hesitantly moves her hand on top of his bandage. She blinks and there are suddenly tears in her eyes and an emotional smile spreading across her face. "You know, when someone says that they'd die for you, it's usually just a figure of speech."

Rick decides not to reply, not wanting to play his actions up in any way.

She sniffles, pulling in her emotions and gently palms his bandages. "You took a bullet for me, Rick." She says as the battle with her emotions is quickly lost and her eyes are flooding with tears, recalling the moment when his eyes gave up on life and she felt the moment when she lost him, now wanting desperately to go back and change that moment so she can tell him she loves him.

Rick watches her emotions change as she palms the dull ache over his shoulder, numbed by prescription painkillers. He's acutely attuned to her emotions and likes to think he's well-trained in not only reading them but in handling them. "You're thinking about something."

Kate sniffles, smiling over her emotional riptide, leaning up and resting her head against her fist, looking down to his shoulder. "I was just thinking about when I was shot."

Rick's eyes look at the top of the covers, in between the valley of her breasts where her scar should be. A part of him feels his stomach churn when he sees her skin is flawless, a momentary cold sweat overcoming him before he looks back up to her eyes.

"I was thinking about how I never really understood why you said you loved me that day. How," she stops to draw in a breath and swat away her tears, "I never thought you telling me how you felt when you thought I was dying was acceptable, but..." she trails off, shaking her head against her hand as she leans back down onto her. "Remembering how you took that bullet and how I was pleading with you just like you did with me that day... I wish I could go back and let you know that I love you."

Blinking hotly, she leans down and hugs his chest, pressing her ear to his pec and cuddling herself into his side, snaking her legs around his as she nuzzled herself into him. The need for his closeness is overwhelming her. He quickly accepts her and wraps his arms around her.

"Maybe..." she continues over her emotions, getting them under control again from being in the safety of his arms, "maybe my getting my memory back was..." she thinks out loud again, nuzzling herself deeper against his chest, "just the natural order of things trying to put itself right. I mean," she says, moving her head against his chest to look up at him, "your memory didn't change when you came here, did it?"

"No," he replies as he tickles gentle circles around her shoulder with the pads of his fingers.

"So," she shrugs against his hand, "maybe being around you somehow brought my memories back of us."

"But that doesn't make any sense." He says as he adjusts the dull ache in his shoulder. "Things changed when I used the artifact."

Her skin is flushed with clamminess when he mentions that, but she doesn't bring it up and simply hides the feeling by turning herself into his chest and pulling at the other side of his ribs.

What did she do so wrong that he'd wished he never met her?

"But that still doesn't explain my dreams, Castle." She says after a long moment of silence, readjusting herself against his side.

"Dreams?" He asks, lifting his head off the flat expanse of his mattress to look at her. "What dreams?"

Kate lifts herself out of the warm cove of his side and leans up on her elbows, looking at him as she lays her hand flat against his stomach. "I've been having dreams of us for weeks." She admits.

Rick's only reply is a surprising lift in his brow.

"They were all of us having sex, and at first, I thought it was just lust but-"

"Lust?" Rick interrupts her, raising his brow even higher and smirking at her in surprise.

"Well," Kate starts, shrugging her shoulders meagerly, "you're cute." Rick just smiles with an amused roll of his eyes and lets his head bounce back against the mattress. "But these dreams always felt more real. And it wasn't until I went to see this professor that I started to piece things together that-"

"Wait," Rick lifts his head up off the mattress again, "what professor?"

Kate readjusts herself to lean her head down against her hand, propped up with her elbow against the bed, looking down to him. "I remember I was trying to research that artifact and came across this professor who wrote a paper on it. Professor-"

"Mansfield?" Rick finishes for her.

Kate stops in her explanation. "You know him?"

"Alexis found his paper online last week and we went to see him trying to look for a way home. Didn't really help other than give me some rant about the world ending. What'd he say to you?"

Kate shakes her head against her hand, rolling her eyes. "Pretty much the same." She gives him a one-sided shrug. "Gave me some story about some experiment some guy ran back in the seventies and an analogy about... a piece of string or something. Something about a string wanting to be at rest err... whatever."

Rick looks away from her with a pinch in his brow, moving his one good arm up to fold behind his head, acting as a pillow. Kate watches him with a lustful glimmer in her eye as his bicep bulges, reaching up to trace its outline with her middle finger. "Maybe that's what this is." Rick muses.

Distracted by his muscles, Kate answers uninterested by the conversation. "What's that?" She asks as she presses the pad of her index finger, testing the firmness of his solid muscles.

"Maybe the intended course of history," Rick thinks out loud, "is us being together... and the dreams you were having was it trying to correct itself. Something must have happened to you to trigger some sort of reset." He tries explaining to himself, giving himself a moment before his eyes flick back up to her, a furrow still knitting his brow together. "What do you remember from the past few weeks? Do you still have memories of before you remember us?"

Kate shrugs again casually. "It sort of feels like a dream I just woke up from." She tries her best to describe it, still entranced by tracing patterns against his body, her eyes following her fingers as she drags her middle finger down the center of his pecs. "Most of it's fuzzy, but I remember certain parts. Like talking with you at the hospital." She smiles warmly. "You surprising me by telling me the way I could make it up to you was to go home and rest."

Rick feels himself sink into memory, feeling his skin shiver at her drawing patterns on his skin.

"Or finding you down in evidence, I remember that." She says with a raise in her brow, looking back up to his eyes for a moment before going back to follow her finger around his chest. "That's when I had a dream about the time I ambushed you and made you keep kissing my neck while I was still on the phone with Ryan."

"Hmm," Rick chuckles, his chest jumping under her finger.

"And I remember you coming over to my apartment last night." She says, laying her palm flat against his chest, searching for his heartbeat.

Rick smiles softly and gazes up at her, not lost in memory as she is, but in her. He's missed her so much. Even before all of this happened with the artifact, it's been ages since they just took a day off and spent the day laying in bed bantering like this, with nothing but the remainder of the bedding covering them. Not since he went missing have they done this.

"I remember me asking you about Bracken and wanting to know who he was." She says, internally hoping he'd catch her hint that it's not just their relationship she remembers. "And I remember getting mad when you wouldn't tell me, and you..." She trails off, losing her words in her mind as the memory replays itself.

Her smile fades off her features as she stares into his eyes.

He was ready to get married... when he doesn't know why she loves him?

Her body starting to seize, Kate clutches the sheet to her chest as she sits up in bed. She can't ignore her doubts any longer, her fears, or her misgivings.

"Kate?" Rick tries as he watches her, trying to get her attention.

But she doesn't answer him and simply swings her bare legs out of the tossed sheets, grabbing his damaged shirt off the floor, slipping it over her arms and buttoning what buttons it has left, and standing up. She feels cold tears form in her eyes as she places one hand on the back of her waist and pushes the other into her hair.

"You were ready to get married," she starts in a low, unsteady voice as she paces away from the bed, "when you don't know why I love you?" She demands, turning back around to look at him with an emotional furrow in her brow.

Rick looks away shamefully, nodding his head away from her.

"Rick," she calls over to him, her voice trembling, all of her doubts and heartbreak flooding up inside of her, "what did I do so wrong..." she attempts, wrangling in as much of the shake in her voice as she can with a breath in, but only succeeds in creating a choked sob, "that you'd wish we'd never met?"

* * *

_A/N: Kind of a filler chapter, I know. I would have kept going, but half of this has been sitting in my doc manager for almost a week and wanted to get it out to you guys, since I'm planning on being busy the rest of the week. There are still some questions as to how "our Kate" got to this universe, and I asked a few people what they were confused about. I hope I clarified some things with this chapter. But for those who are still confused..._

_Kate has been experiencing flashbacks from her relationship with Rick that are triggered by certain things or places, hence her headaches, and when she drank her coffee that Rick brought her every morning, it restored her memory of their entire relationship. One guest reviewer said it was inspired by Fringe season 4. And while it wasn't the inspiration for this story, it's kind of similar, where when Peter shows up, Olivia starts getting memories of her relationship with him even though he'd never existed in her universe. _


	14. Chapter 14

Rick turns away from her, looking down across the expanse of the bed, her place that she just climbed out of.

"Rick!" She demands, emotion soiling her voice and electrifying the air in his bedroom. Her heart has never felt this... cracked. It's not broken, she's not resolved to this. Does he even know that she's committed to him? Was their relationship so tattered and broken from everything that they went through that he really wanted to erase it all from history? "Rick, answer-"

"It wasn't because of you." He says softly under her demanding, soiled voice as she stands a few feet away from the edge of the bed in nothing but his damaged shirt that she tore open hours ago.

She feels her heart slink up her throat like bile. It's a feeling that's clawed at her like a wild animal before. Meredith, Vaughn, her job in DC. This was always the part of their relationship she's feared the most. Opening up to him is one thing. It's easy, he makes it easy; with his smile, his eyes, his arms and non-judgemental tone. Opening up to him at times, she's felt she's done a good job. Letting him shoulder her insecurities and vulnerabilities and weaknesses with her was a huge step for her.

But getting him to let her shoulder his? It's a beast that she doesn't know how to tame. She has to do things she's not entirely built for.

As his eyes turn away from her, his head twisting against the flat surface of the bed, Kate feels every fiber of her tug her toward him. "Rick," she calls to him in a soft voice, trying to get him to look at her. It's a small test to see how think he's shoring up his walls. She still can't imagine how he spent four years doing this with her.

When all that happens is his chest rising as he takes in a long breath, committing himself to not making eye contact just yet, she cranes her neck and brushes a stray strand of hair behind her ear.

"Baby," she says in a softer voice, stepping toward the bed and stretching out her hands to him, "come here."

Rick looks over to her with a deep arch in his brow, feeling ashamed, small, weak, and so petty for letting all this surface, but doesn't have the stomach to quip his way out of this and just throw her off. He scoots himself across the expanse of the bed, draping the thin sheet over his bottom half and swinging his legs out, letting her take his hands as she settles herself down onto his lap, just as she did the morning of the day she told him she loved him for the first time.

In his mind, it's not because he wants to open up to her, or because it's a talk he needs to have, or because it will be good for their relationship in the long run. He just feels too embarrassed right now to turn her away.

Kate sits down in his lap and looks down to his chest. "Babe, I want you to say something to me."

Rick feels his expression echo his true feelings despite the mask he's telling himself to put on, and looks into her eyes.

She gives his hands a squeeze before meetings his gaze. "I want you to say that I love you."

He lets out a breath that he strains to keep from shaking as it fans off her chest. Now he got her to think that he doesn't love her? "I know that I love you, Kate." He says with as much honesty as he can, shaking his head slowly and looking up to her eyes.

Kate smiles softly and shakes her head with him. "No, baby," she almost coos. Rick stops and looks back up to her with his neck craned, his head leaned down into the space between them. "I want you to say," she starts again, slower as she reaches over and takes his hand and presses it to her chest, "that _I," _she pauses to press her hand to his chest, mirroring the gesture she made for him, "love _you." _

Rick's spine tightens as he looks down to his hand, focusing on a spot in between his third and fourth finger. That's right where it should be. He lets out a long, hard breath that he'd been holding. "You love me."

Kate's smile flashes onto her face briefly when she hears the words and pets his chest with the hand she has pressed into him. "Say it again."

He nods slightly and moves his hand up the valley of her breasts, dipping his head further between them, committing himself to the statement. "You love me."

Kate takes her other hand and places it on his jaw, pulling his eyes back up to meet her. She pets his stubble softly before softly coxing him again. "Again."

He moves his other arm around her back and holds her gaze, feeling himself being ripped open to her. "You love me."

She pets his jaw and smiles warmly down to him before pulling him to her lips. They meet in an emotionally tempered kiss, seeking comfort and safety in each other as her arms drape over his shoulders, deepening their kiss and seeking more of him as she presses her lips against him harder, putting her hand on his head. After he's earned another soft moan, she tickles the back of his scalp with the tips of her nails and pulls back, her eyes shining.

"When you were missing," she begins, speaking the memory as it comes to her mind, "at night, when I'd go to bed," she begins to admit, looking down to his chest, "I'd climb under the covers and see you weren't there."

Rick quickly engulfs her in his arms, moving his arms around her and pressing his hands flat against her back.

"I missed you so much and I thought I'd never see you again, so..." she trails off, feeling her eyes burn again, but knowing that he's here for her, just like he always is, "so I'd turn toward your side of the bed, every night, and I'd recite my vows." She tells him with a sad smile as she looks back up at him. "Sometimes I'd say them three or four times because," she blinks hotly, pressing away the tracks of her tears, "because I thought I'd never get the chance to say them to my husband."

Rick can't take this feeling in his heart anymore. "Kate, I'm so sorry about the wedding. I-"

"Hey," she stops him, shaking her head with a smile and pressing the pads of her fingers to his lips to silence him. "I already told you, Rick, I never blamed you for what happened."

Rick looks off to the side, a hard chill coming into his eyes as his jaw tenses under her fingers. "Don't placate me, okay?"

Kate's smile slowly starts to fade, watching him chill under her touch. "What do you mean?"

"I saw you when you showed me that tent you found by that lake, Kate." A sickening feeling snakes through her system when he says that. "I heard you, I know you think I left and stayed away on purpose. I know you doubted me, so don't say you never blamed me for what happened."

Her dry throat tries to get the words out, but she can't manage it. And it's this part where she'd usually continue to pet his stubble and coax him back into the sheets, make love, and they'd forget about it. "Rick," she starts in a whisper, "one of the things I love most about you," she begins to tell him, figuring there's no better way to tell him, "is how much you believe in me... how much faith you always seem to have in the people you care about."

Rick deflates as she snakes her arms back around his neck. He can't really figure out why that's one of the things she loves about him. For everyone else, that part of him has always been a weakness everyone else has exploited. And since that's how everyone else used it, that's how he sees it, as a weakness. But he bottles that back up where it belongs and lets her continue.

"And I know," she breaks his thoughts with her soft voice, "that I haven't always treated that the way I should have in the past. I know I've probably taken advantage of that at times. But," she trails off, a smile breaking her face apart as she looks back up to him, "I'm always amazed at how you always maintain such unwavering faith in me. I'm always amazed at how much you always seem to believe in me... or believe in us. Sometimes I'm even envious of it." She admits, her smile dissipating. "Because you're right."

His heart cracks inside of his chest again, but he tries his hardest to power through it and maintains eye contact.

"If it was you in that position, Rick, you'd..." she stops to draw in a defiant breath, "ignore all evidence and all reason that tells you I betrayed you and you'd have faith that I'd never do that to you. You'd believe in me against everything rational. And I _wish," _she emotionally exclaims with a roll of her eyes as she meets his gaze again, "that I had it in me to have that kind of faith in someone... the way you do. Because the fact is that I do love you and I know that you'd never miss our wedding for anything. I'd," she says, her throat closing, "like to spend the rest of our lives with you teaching me how."

Rick breathes softly, feeling his heart heal itself slowly.

After a moment, Kate smirks as a strand of hair falls in front of her face. "That's in my vows."

Sneaking around his defenses, that earns her a bright smile from him and a soft, airy chuckle as he pulls at her with his arms around her. He looks down, tracing a strand of her hair with his eyes, as he speaks. "You asked why I wished we'd never met."

The loving air between them vanishes in a flash and she's pulled right back to the bile in her throat, the feeling of having to push against his walls, instead of the satisfaction of opening up to him and accepting her. But it's squashed soon after by her heartache. "Were we so bad together that you'd call upon mystical forces to erase us?"

"It wasn't because of you." He says again, looking up to her with a glimmer in his blue eyes. "Kate," he starts with a twinge in his voice, looking down to the opening of his shirt she has hanging off her shoulders, "without me in your life, you're the captain of the Twelfth." He says to her with a smile, looking back up to her. "Without me, you never had your apartment bombed. Without me, Montgomery is still alive. Because you never met me, you..." he trails off, looking back down to her chest painfully, reaching back around her and placing his hand where her scar should be, "without me you never had to go the pain I put you through."

As his finger circles a small space in the center of her chest, her breath is drawn out of her lungs. "Babe," she starts softly, "what if I were to tell you that all of the hassle and trauma I've put you through and the worry I've put your family through being my partner all these years wasn't worth us being together?"

Rick's brow creases deeply and he quickly looks back up to her. "I d-"

He cuts himself off, the words forming meaning in his head before he can finish them. And as his eyes let go of the fire that she ignited and drift shut, she catches his jaw as his head starts to dip. She pulls his eyes back up to her with a smile. "What?"

He sighs softly, "I'd say I don't care." Kate lets out a breath and feels her smile brighten. "I'd say I'd walk through Hell and back if it meant being with you."

"So why can't the same go for me?" She asks in the same soft, gentle voice. "Why can't you believe that I love you just as much to put myself through hell for you?"

It's this time that he forces himself to answer honestly. "Because I've never had anyone love me that honestly before."

When she gets her answer, it makes her heart ache and she reaches back around him, petting his hair in a loving motion that lets him know she's not going anywhere, giving him permission to continue.

He lets out a strained breath and grits his teeth. "It's real with you, Kate. Gina fought with me constantly and came after me for alimony payments. Meredith cheated on me. Kyra fled the country. So," his jaw clenches again as he looks away from her, "after that many tries, it's hard to believe that I actually managed to find someone that says that and actually means it."

"But Rick," she chuckles under her breath, smiling again, "shouldn't that be a part of believing in someone? Especially me? You think I didn't know what I was promising when you asked me to marry you?"

"I know," he sighs in a hard breath. "I'm supposed to be better than this." He says, craning his neck shamefully.

But she cups his jaw again and pulls him back up to her gaze. "Rick," she breathes, "I love you. And just like you," she says, softly palming his bandaged shoulder, "I'd walk through Hell and back if it meant being with you. Dunn bombing my apartment, getting shot, Maddox getting away, Tyson," she rattles off, "I'd go through all of it over again as long as I got you. And so what our wedding got ruined?" She says with a casual shrug of her shoulders. "So what if we never have that big beautiful ceremony? BFD."

With that, Rick's face splits in a bright smile, once again having her sneak around his defenses. Softly laughing with her, he looks up to her after a moment, he looks back up to her gaze, their eyes sparkling with love, a familiar connection forming between them.

"So, are we okay now?" Kate asks, putting her fingers back into his hair.

Rick smiles softly and massages the dip of her spine. "I'm starving. You know the loser who lives in this loft in this universe doesn't cook?"

Kate smiles with him, the thought of food sounding inticing. "Martha around?" She asks, wiggling her brow at him.

"Thankfully," he says with a husky tone, running his hand up and down her thigh, "she stays out most of the time and Alexis is visiting with some friends all day and won't be home until tonight."

"Mmm," she hums and snakes her arms around his neck, pulling herself closer to him, "maybe we should liven this universe up with that breakfast thing we used to do back at my place."

Rick jumps with eagerness underneath her and starts to climb out from under her. "I'll get the spatula."


End file.
